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THE RELIGION OF 
THE SPIRIT WORLD 



THE RELIGION OF 
THE SPIRIT WORLD 

WRITTEN BY THE SPIRITS THEMSELVES 



BY 
THE REV. PROF. G. HENSLOW, M.A, 

F.L.S, F.G.S., F.R.H.S. 

Author of "The Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism,*' 
"Spirit Psychometry," "Spiritual Teaching of 
Christ's Life," "Christian Beliefs Re-con- 
sidered in the Light of Modern 
Thought," etc. 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1920 



^; 



Copyright, 1920, 
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 



VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 

BINSHAMTON AND NEW YORK 



©CI.A576397 
9BPfel'®l9 

SEP 16 J920 



A FOREWORD 

I beg to offer my most grateful thanks and to ac- 
knowledge my indebtedness to the authors and 
publishers whose works I have herein quoted. As 
this most important subject depends entirely 
upon what the Spirits have told us, the book 
could not have been compiled without making 
free use of all the communications I could find. 

I wrote, I believe, to every one of the publishers 
or authors from whom I quoted one or more para- 
graphs. The great majority replied, not only 
with complete acquiescence, but often with words 
of approval and encouragement. In one or two 
cases the publishers had left and could not be 
traced. If it be found I have accidentally 
omitted to write to any publishers, I trust they 
will forgive me, for the sake of the importance of 
the subject. 



INTRODUCTION 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS OF OUR LIFE IN THE 
FUTURE 

The world is awakening to the fact that we can 
communicate with those who have gone before, 
and that they can respond to us. 

The first thing to be done, was to prove by the 
strictly scientific methods of Induction and Ex- 
perimental Verification, that these facts were gen- 
uine truths and not a priori assumptions or trick- 
ery ; let us " prove all things and hold fast to that 
which is good." 

In my Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism 1 I 
proceeded to follow these lines, assisted by practi- 
cal demonstrations of spirit-photographs of per- 
sons recognized or not, as the case may be ; as well 
as by autographs, identified or otherwise, usually 
called " Psychographs " ; together with numerous 
" automatic handwritings." 

Since spirits all tell us that when we awake on 
the other side with our spirit-bodies, we are other- 
wise, or mentally, exactly the same as when we 
left this earth, it is only to be expected that the 

i Published by Dodd, Mead & Co. 



viii INTRODUCTION 

well-known characteristics of our friends and re- 
lations assure us at once of their presence. With 
regard to difficulties of communication, Impera- 
tor x said : " We would point out to you that all 
our intercourse with the material plane is gov- 
erned by laws which your science has not yet de- 
fined. Neither we, nor you, know as yet many of 
the causes which interfere with our power. We 
are not able to lay down laws for your guidance, 
scarce even for our own. . . . No proper care is 
taken of our mediums. The instrument is out of 
tune, unstrung, or overworked. The atmospheric 
conditions vary. We do not always know how to 
meet the various effects so caused. Circles are 
not properly composed; and many things com- 
bine to make it impossible that phenomena 
should always be similar in their nature, or be 
evoked with precise regularity." 

i Spirit Teachings, p. 117. (Office of Light.) Imperator 
was the assumed name of a highly intellectual and religious 
spirit, who wrote by means of the Rev. Stainton Moses' hand 
nearly all that is recorded in his 8vo. volume, containing some 
100,000 words. If any reader should have doubts about the 
genuineness of the Rev. Stainton Moses' reports, or of his men- 
tal characteristics, &c, I would refer him to Ch. vi., pp. 60-69, 
of Mr. J. Arthur's work, entitled, Spiritualism, its History, 
Phenomena, and Doctrine, 



INTRODUCTION ix 

It has been said by a writer who disbelieved in 
spiritualism, that, as regards any religious value 
in it, it must ever be useless. Such an assump- 
tion will be disposed of by the present collection 
of teachings from the other side. 

The first and most important truth stated by 
all the spirits who communicate with us on reli- 
gious matters, is, that we should take to heart the 
indisputable fact that we must regard this world 
as the opportunity for preparing ourselves for 
the next, by means of the forming of Character, 
by exhibiting on all occasions the Christ-like Con- 
duct. For when we have passed over the border- 
line, our eyes will be opened to the fact that our 
condition and place there will have been, so to 
say, automatically and already determined by 
our character acquired on earth. Such is God's 
method of " Judgment by Natural Law." They 
may be bright or gloomy, enjoyable or painful; 
we may be welcomed by loving relations and 
friends, or shunned; not only because of having 
done wrong to others ; but because we have left 
undone what we ought to have done. 

But this is no more than all may learn from 
the New Testament, Let the reader prepare 



x INTRODUCTION 

himself by reading St. James' definition of the 
Christian Religion. As he was Onr Lord's own 
brother, he doubtless knew Jesus more intimately 
than any one else. Then let the reader turn to 
the results of the life spent on earth. Then read 
the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus ; though 
written in symbolical language, we can read the 
truth that " Gehenna " means mental agony, 
while " Abraham's bosom " indicates restful 
bliss. 

Secondly; as all terrestrial environments are 
gone for ever, all their interests generally go with 
them. The enjoyment of the use of money is 
gone, the pleasures of the body cease for ever 
with its death, though cravings may remain, but 
the soul can rise to far greater joys. The in- 
tense enjoyment of the intellect is endless; the 
pleasure of benevolence knows no limit; the en- 
noblement of the character by the Christ-like con- 
duct is open to all for ever. Religion is conduct 
as revealed by our lives, as St. James implies. 

The so-called " Evangelical " School of 
Thought will miss what is considered by its mem- 
bers the " Gospel," namely the Doctrine of the 
Atonement. For, as will be shown in Chapter 



INTRODUCTION xi 

13, it was a wrong interpretation of Scripture, 
and due to the Latin translation (expiatio). 
The word " Redemption " also is from the Latin 
Vulgate and not the original Greek, which means 
" rescue " and " forgiveness " of sins, literally a 
" loosening away by a price " ; but the " purchas- 
ing " and " price " were metaphors only. All 
that God asks for, as Jesus did, is true repent- 
ance and a new life. Repentance carries forgive- 
ness with it. The word " Atonement " has lost 
its meaning of " At-one-ment " but has been 
rightly replaced by " Reconciliation " in the only 
passage where it occurred in the New Testament. 

The Roman Catholic branch of the Church will 
miss the dogma of a " Real, mystical, substantial 
Presence " ; for there is no scriptural ground for 
it, and the Preaching Spirits have nothing to say 
about it. It and the Lord's Supper are simply 
ignored. It originated in the declarations of an 
obscure monk in the seventh century, who wished 
to oppose the edict of the Greek Emperor to put 
down image- worship, by substituting the worship 
of the bread and wine. 

One objection, which opponents of spiritualism 
make, is the so-called " trivialities " of the com- 



xii INTRODUCTION 

munications from the other side ; but they do not 
tell ns what we ought to expect. This subject 
must be regarded from two points of view, a com- 
mon sense aspect and a serious one. When peo- 
ple pass over and come and talk with us, or write 
by our hands, in a few days afterwards, why 
should it be supposed that they must have 
changed all at once? What they were, so they 
are. They talk and laugh just as they did before 
their decease. This very naturalness is a wit- 
ness to the truth that they are the same and we 
recognize them by it. Similarly a preacher on 
earth may become a preacher there, and when 
such revisits us, he talks seriously, learnedly and 
reverently, and often perhaps more wisely than 
some of our clergy do when still on earth. 

It may be desirable to say a few words on a few 
spirit -photographs and psychographs alluded to. 1 

Since spirit-photographs show our friends at 
the age and in the dress, etc., which we can recog- 
nize, sceptics at once assume they must be frauds. 
Such assumptions are worse than useless, for 

1 1 must refer the reader to my Proofs of the Truths of 
Spiritualism for them and many other illustrations mentioned 
in this book. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

they intensify prejudice. The only way to find 
out the truth is to learn what the Spirits have to 
tell us ; and when you find they all say the same 
thing, wherever in this world they can communi- 
cate, you have no alternative but to accept their 
universal statement that all such " materializa- 
tions " are made by thought, temporarily, for a 
definite purpose. How it is done is another mat- 
ter, which they tell us, they cannot further ex- 
plain. In writing they use our pens and ink, but 
" not the same," as a spirit told me, but could not 
explain it. See the spirit-photograph (No. 18) 
and compare the Archdeacon Colley's signature 
with (No. 19) in a fragment of a letter to me 
before he passed over. 

In the present book I have confined myself to 
what the spirits have to say on the most impor- 
tant subject on earth and in heaven, namely that 
of Religion. The result of their teaching is that 
the Church and the world have a great deal to 
unlearn before the human mind will be " at one " 
witTi what they will have to learn on quitting this 
earth. 

I will explain it by something I overheard. A 
clergyman was talking to a young lady about the 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

great self-sacrifice some one was making in doing 
good in the " slums." She replied by a question : 
"But what has all that got to do with Christian- 
ity? » 

She was not the only one who does not know 
that the Christian Religion is this very thing, as 
St. James puts it tersely : " Pure Religion is to 
visit the fatherless and widows." 

If any reader is inclined to ask the same ques- 
tion, let him read Mr. Heslop's letters to his wife, 
from the other world, entitled Speaking Across 
the Border-line. 1 

Religion on the other side, as we learn from 
spirits, is simply what it ought to be on this 
earth — the Christ-like Character and Conduct 
based on a Self-Sacrificing Enthusiasm of Hu- 
manity — called " Love." Ecclesiastical dog- 
mas are not recognized in Heaven. 

The reader will find various repetitions in this 
book; for it proceeds on Induction; that is, the 
accumulation of quite independent statements, 
which corroborate one another, and so establish 
the Truth of all. Moreover, I quote the same 
passage twice if it require fresh emphasis. 

i See also Private Dowding (Dodd, Mead & Co.) . 



INTRODUCTION xv 

That Imperator and others were really spirits 
communicating with Rev. Stainton Moses is 
proved by the mass of matter in Spirit Teachings, 
which could not possibly have been Mr. Moses 
writing unconsciously, because it was diametri- 
cally opposed to what Mr. Moses had been brought 
up to believe ; yet after some years of Imperator' s 
teaching, he found he became " regenerated " by 
it, as he tells us. 

In addition, a little event occurred at a seance 
which was very convincing to him. He de- 
scribes it as follows : 

" One very striking case occurred, thus : A 
spirit who had long communicated with us was 
cross-examined by one of our circle from a book 
which recorded some facts of his life. The book 
had lately been published, and no one of us, ex- 
cept the questioner, had seen it. The names and 
dates had got jumbled in his head, and it was 
most striking to find the unseen intelligence 
correcting every mistake, refusing flatly and 
persistently to acquiesce in an error and even 
spelling out words that had been mispro- 
nounced. 

" The sounds were made most expressive of 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

annoyance, irritation and vexation. The correc- 
tions were rapped out with the greatest prompt- 
ness before a question was complete, and in all 
cases with literal exactness. It was impossible 
to doubt that one was dealing with an entity 
whose individuality was as strong as ever, whose 
memory was by no means impaired, and who had 
lost nothing of the energy that characterized him 
in his embodied state. I refer to that evening the 
growth in my mind of a strong conviction that 
the Intelligences who communicated were really 
the persons they pretended to be. The accent of 
denial was so perfect, the irritable rejoinder and 
corrections were so natural, that I do not believe 
a personator could have done it, or would have 
thought of such a subtle trait. On the following 
morning I questioned on the subject. (Mr. 
Moses writes his own comments and answers in 
italics. ) 

/ was much struck by your corrections last 
night. 

" The book was wrong and imperfect in many 

ways. I did make acquaintance with before 

he became my pupil, and I told you truly that I 
studied at Paris." 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

/ don't doubt it. You were evidently in ear- 
nest and quite angry. 

"It is provoking to me to be questioned 
wrongly, and from imperfect information imper- 
fectly remembered, I knew what I said." 

/ can't affect to be sorry; for it brought out the 
best proof of identity I have had yet. Of course 
we only value it as such. 

" Yes. But you watch for an opportunity of 
entangling." 

Oh, no! I only wanted proof. 

" You have proof which it would be hard to in- 
crease." 

This spirit doubtless refers to Imperator's 
communications; which supply ample proofs to 
all unprejudiced minds. 

I will add a remarkable proof of identity of my 
own experience. When I had partially written 
the manuscript of this book, I entrusted it to a 
friend. A few months followed and I saw an 
obituary notice of him. Being anxious to re- 
cover my manuscript, I wrote to his " Executor," 
not knowing anything of his family. The manu- 
script was returned by his family. On the same 
evening Mr. wrote by automatic handwrit- 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

ing as follows : " Mrs. will have no diffi- 
culty in finding your manuscript, as it is on the 
writing table, over the right hand drawer on the 
top." On subsequently enquiring if this had 
been correct, the reply came that it was " abso- 
lutely correct in every word." 

One more example. I had lent a book on 
Botany to a friend, who most unexpectedly died 
three days afterwards. He wrote : " Please tell 
Mr. Henslow I was much obliged to him for lend- 
ing me the book." The mediumistic lady who 
wrote automatically knew nothing about it. 

There are two ways by which spirits can com- 
municate with us by means of photographic 
plates. One is in the ordinary way of taking a 
photo by daylight — provided sl medium is pres- 
ent; but he need take no part in the procedure. 
The second is by holding a packet of plates un- 
opened, in the left hand, with the right on the 
top ; then each member of the " Circle " puts his 
or her hands in the same way. Lastly, the con- 
trol of the medium (in trance) similarly holds 
them. In about 30 seconds the control removes 
the medium's hands. All the others follow suit, 
when the former states on which plate or plates, 



INTRODUCTION xix 

faces, or writing, will be found. The owner 
takes the packet, still unopened, home and de- 
velops those only which w^ere mentioned. They 
always prove to be correct, as the Spirit control 
foretold. All trickery and deception are out of 
the question in both cases. 

In my book on The Proofs of the Truths of 
Spiritualism my object was simply to prove that 
our departed friends can and do communicate 
with us, and we with them. There was nothing 
particularly edifying, as a rule, in what the spir- 
its wrote or said, excepting in the religious dis- 
course of Ajax, who always commences the st- 
ances at Dr. Hooper's house, the latter being the 
medium. My object in all other cases was to 
secure as much variety of evidence as possible. 

In this present work my aim is different. A 
certain number of Spirits do communicate with 
us on highly spiritual matters and their writings 
have been published. Such are Imperator's 
Spirit Teachings, a book containing 100,000 
words, and that being only a portion of all that 
he wrote, by means of Rev. Stainton Moses' hand, 
Julia's After Death; she wrote by the late Mr. W. 
T. Stead's hand, the anonymous writer of Christ 



xx INTRODUCTION 

in You, Mr. Heslop's Speaking Across the Bor- 
der-Line, and many others. 

The late Rev. Arthur Chambers' widely read 
book, Our Life After Death, 1 has reached 110 edi- 
tions, and has for its object to treat of the " In- 
termediate State/' i. e., the " period every one 
passes through, called < Hades.' " The word 
" Heaven " — the origin of which is unknown — 
stands for one or more higher spheres than 
Hades. St. Paul tells us of three, 2 the lowest of 
the series is perhaps Hades itself or our place of 
probation. The parable of the rich man and 
Lazarus points to some separation of the good 
from the bad; as the disciple said of Judas, he 
" went to his own place." 3 

That such is the case the Spirits assure us ; so 
that this belief seems to have been accepted by 
the disciples. 

Sympathy or Love is the uniting link in the Be- 
yond, being the basis of the " Communion of 
Saints." 

In regard to the future life, Mr. Chambers pro- 

i Gay and Hancock. 

2 II Cor., 12, 2. 

3 " Place " seems to mean " conditions " created automati- 
cally by the man himself. See Private Dowding's account. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

ceeds to establish from the Bible three " Propo- 
sitions " here epitomized. 

No, I : The Continuity of a conscious personal- 
ity. This is abundantly confirmed by Spirit- 
communications however made. 

No. II : Man does not pass at once into either 
Heaven or Hell. As a Spirit Control ( Ajax) ob- 
served : " We do not become either angels or dev- 
ils on passing over." 

No. Ill : We enter at once into the Intermedi- 
ate state, or Hades-life. 

As the " cloud of witnesses " are all about us 
and communicate with us the moment we address 
them, it is obvious that tthey are still on or near 
the earth, but invisible to us, unless one be clair- 
voyant. 

Mr. Chambers draws five deductions as fol- 
lows: 

" 1 : There is no break of continuity in passing 
from Earth-life to the Hades-life. 

[Spirits have spoken to me within a few 
days of the departure, as e. g., the Ven. 
Archdeacon Colley.] 

2: In Hades-life we shall be in relationship 
with those we knew on earth. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

[I have experienced this fact, but re- 
versed.] 
3 : That there are different spheres of experi- 
ence in the Hades-life. 

[We are told of certain friends to whom 
this applies.] 
4 : A work of perfecting and developing will go 
on in the Hades-life. 

[But it depends upon our own will and 

energy.] 

5 : There is preaching of Christ's Gospel in this 

Intermediate life, which warrants us in believ- 

ing that the work of saving mankind is extended 

beyond the grave." 

Mr. Chambers, then, establishes these truths 
by appealing to Scripture. I cannot improve 
upon his Propositions and Deductions, so quote 
them, for my object is to prove that he is right 
from the evidence of the Spirits themselves ; that 
is to say, the actual words from the inhabitants 
of Hades, for such is much more convincing than 
any argumentative expositions. 

In an Appendix Mr. Chambers discusses " Fu- 
ture Punishments " and God's " Purpose of the 
Ages"; but he does not make it quite clear 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

enough that there are no " punishments " or " re- 
wards " from without as with the Israelites, nor, 
that there is no " judgment " in the ordinary 
manner at all ; for we shall be all " Self -justi- 
fied " or " Self-condemned," according to the 
great spiritual, but Natural Law of Conscience 
established by God. Mr. Chambers says : " We 
would by no means deny that there is in the 
World Beyond a very real and awful judgment 
upon all sin and impenitence." It is only the 
word " Judgment " which may be misleading. 
He says, " To us the words of Christ are too em- 
phatic to be mistaken. Christ spoke of a " Dark- 
ness without," "a weeping and gnashing of 
teeth," " a Gehenna of fire." But these are all 
our self -wrought or natural consequences : hence 
their absolute justice. 

This and much more is of course true since 
Christ said it. Moreover Spirits themselves con- 
firm it, as the reader will see in Mr. Heslop's 
Speaking Across the Border-Line, for he was ap- 
pointed as a missionary to visit the awful places, 
and Private Dowding describes his own experi- 
ences. 

The point to be remembered is that whatever is 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

suffered as a mental infliction is in exact propor- 
tion to the sins of the sufferer. We may call it 
* Judgment " but, I repeat, it is self-wrougM and 
must be self-borne, and we must be self -raised out 
of it ; though helpers are always at hand. 

This law is expressed in the words : " What- 
soever a man soweth that shall he reap." Hence, 
as Mr. Heslop and others tell us from the other 
side, it is no use for the sufferer to pray for re- 
lief — like the rich man in the parable — as long 
as he shows no sign of true repentance, but only 
self-regrets for what he is enduring. 

That there is no Judgment in the ordinary 
sense of the word, Our Lord makes it quite clear ; 
for we read: "All judgment is given unto the 
Son " ; but Christ says : " I judge no man ... I 
came not to judge but to save " and adds : " The 
Word shall judge you at the Last Day." In one 
word, it is the Conscience. 

So that when He gives us a parable of the 
Judgment Day all the King does is to separate 
those compared with sheep, from the goats — like 
the tares from the wheat ; that is all who have fol- 
lowed His Word, and all who have neglected to 
do so. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

Mr. Chambers argues in favour of " Universal- 
ism/' i. e., that all will be ultimately saved ; but 
he omits to quote passages which clearly show 
the possibility of a man's annihilation. 

The Greek word olethros means " absolute de- 
struction "; as of the temple, of which Our Lord 
said not one stone should stand upon another. 
So too Christ said : " Fear Him, who can de- 
stroy both body and soul in Gehenna, " 

This seems to correspond with the " Second 
Death," i. e., of those who utterly refuse to make 
any effort to recover themselves, and persistently 
reject all offers of help to amend. As a Spirit 
said in my hearing : " While the good continue to 
rise, the utterly impenitent sink and disappear; 
and we do not know what becomes of them." 

I asked another if this were true. The reply 
was : " Yes ; but we do not think there are many 
who do, but it is true." 

Mr. Chambers adds : " All future punishments 
are Fatherly, remedial and terminable." This is 
true, provided the sufferer himself will make the 
requisite effort to escape and rise out of his men- 
tal thraldom into a higher life. This self-effort 
is absolutely necessary. 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

Unless this be remembered, the word " all " is 
apt to mislead. Thus Mr. Chambers observes 
that Christ said : " I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto me." He meant 
that He would have wished all men to come and 
be saved ; but we know that the Jews who cruci- 
fied Him never did allow themselves to be drawn 
to Him ; for they persecuted the Christians soon 
afterwards. Again, it is said : God " willeth 
that all men should be saved," but St. Paul said : 
" Quench not the Spirit," implying it was pos- 
sible to do so, for man has a Free-will and 
can choose to follow Christ or " do despite to 
him." 

Neither God nor Christ, therefore, can save a 
man, if he determinately refuse to be saved. 

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was attrib- 
uting what was good to an evil source. A man 
whose mind is so warped cannot be forgiven as 
long as he wills to retain this belief, for he does 
not want or care for forgiveness. But, if he 
should in time come to " change his understand- 
ing " as the Greek word for " repent " really 
means; then, he can put himself into a state 
which God's love can recognize as humble re- 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

pentance ; when, forgiveness and reconciliation to 
God the Father are a natural result. 

I would refer the reader to an excellent epito- 
mized History of Spiritualism and its Phenom- 
ena and Doctrine which has lately appeared, with 
two parts, No. I: Historical and Evidential; 
and Part II: Religious Aspect and Criticisms. 
(Oassell, 1918.) 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction — General Considerations of 
Our Life in the Future vii 

I The Passing Over — The Reception of Our- 
selves and Our Little Ones 1 

II The Necessary Pre-acquired Mental Condi- 
tions for Securing Happiness in the Next 
World 28 

III Man's Conception of God; Man and His Du- 

ties, Here and Hereafter 39 

IV The Laws of Eternal Life 57 

V The Gospel of Character, Preached and 

Practised in the Next Life 78 

VI " Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, To- 
day and for Ever " (Heb. 13, 8) . . . . 92 

VII Imperator and His Religious Position ; What 

is True Christianity? 107 

VIII The Acquisition of the Christ-Like Char- 
acter and Conduct is Everything Here- 
after, and Must Be Striven for on Earth 119 

IX Agape, the True Christian Love, i. e., the 
"Enthusiasm of Humanity" (Seeley) is 
the Greatest Feature of the Next World 126 

X The True Spiritual Meaning of " Heaven " 

and "Hell" 154 

xxix 



xxx CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI The Doctrine of the Atonement not Ac- 
cepted in the Next World, but Replaced 
by the " at-one-ment j " %. e., the recon- 
CILIATION of Man to God, on His Sincere 
Repentance and Amendment of Life — 
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper . . 169 

XII The Fate of the Suicide — A Terrible 

Warning 213 

XIII A Future Annihilation Possible, but Self- 

Wrought 226 

XIV Spiritualism in the Bible, e.g., The Witch 

of Endor, and the Holy Seance on the 
Day of Pentecost 234 

XV The Nature of Man, Here and Hereafter . 253 



RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 
WORLD 



CHAPTER I 

THE PASSING OVER. THE RECEPTION OF 
OURSELVES AND OF OUR LITTLE ONES 

Experiences of crossing the Border-line: Mr. Heslop's 
and that of Private Dowding. His description of the 
flowers. — No words can explain 01* describe the other 
world. — Excessive grief for the departed harmful to them. 
— Examples of psychographs of tender sympathies from 
the Beyond and a friendly New Year's Greeting to the 
" Crewe Circle," and to the present writer from the Ven. 
Archdeacon Colley. — The Great Law of Evolution, or 
" Self -adaptation to changed conditions of life," applies 
to man spiritually; as to all other beings of the Creation, 
bodily. — " Heaven " is what you choose to make it on this 
earth. — Flowers on the other side. — Law of Evolution. 
The reception of Little Children by Guardian Spirit-foster- 
mothers. — Spirit-photographs : face and clothes for identi- 
fication assumed temporarily by thought. 

My first extract shall be from a small but in- 
teresting book, consisting of letters from her hus- 
band, written by Mrs. Heslop's hand automati- 
cally. 



2 BELIGION OF THE SPIKIT WOELD 

The circumstances connected with the Passing 
Over may be very different in the cases of many 
souls ; but as a hopeful example, I quote that of 
Mr. Heslop, 1 who thus writes : " You would like 
me to tell you how I passed to spirit life. When 
I died, I simply fell into a state of unconscious- 
ness, and was taken at once into my mother's 
loving care. In this condition I remained for a 
fortnight, by your time. Then, by the help of 
my mother and other dear ones, I revived. Grad- 
ually the wonders and beauty of this new world 
unfolded themselves. The loveliness of the trees 
and flowers, the grandeur of the mountains, the 
glint of distant lakes, seemed familiar, yet all 
spiritualized. It was some time before I could 
realize what had happened, and that death had 
really passed; so I rejoiced, for my sufferings on 
earth had been very great, and I had longed 
to die. Then spiritual illumination came to me. 
I developed wonderful new powers and was liter- 
ally born again. They carried me to my beautiful 
home, and every flower I loved was there to greet 

1 1 would strongly recommend all who are interested in Spir- 
itualism to read Speaking Across the Border-line, by F. Heslop 
(C. Taylor). 



THE PASSING OVER 3 

me. Oh, such roses ! Would that you could see 
them too. Iu this exquisite world all things are 
pervaded by the law of affinity — two halves of 
a complete whole. Thus, if you gather one of 
these flowers, the affinity of the flower is still 
there. It does not fade and die, as with you. 
When you have finished with it, it flies back to 
its other soul, and is absorbed into it again." 

" I have promised to tell you more of my own 
experiences in this land of light and beauty. 
They have been very wonderful, many of them, 
but the most wonderful cannot be explained in 
words, for the simple reason that there are no 
words that can give you any idea of them, no 
parallel on earth by which to compare them. To 
you these experiences are a sealed book until you 
have joined me here and can take part in them." 

" Private Dowding " describes his experiences 
on passing over. He says : " Physical death is 
nothing. There really is no cause for fear. 
This is what happened. I have a perfectly clear 
memory of the whole incident. I had no special 
intimation of danger until I heard the whizz of a 
shell. Then followed an explosion, something 
struck hard, hard against my neck. I fell, and 



4 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

as I did so, without passing through any ap- 
parent interval of unconsciousness, I found my- 
self outside myself, helping two of my pals to 
carry my body down the trench labyrinth towards 
a nursing station. Death for me was a simple 
experience — no horror, no long-drawn suffering, 
no conflict. When I found that my two pals 
could carry my body without my help, I dropped 
behind. I just followed in a curiously humble 
way. Then I lost consciousness and slept 
soundly." 

" Julia " in her first letter says on her death : 
" I found myself free from my body. It was such 
a strange new feeling. I was standing close to 
the bedside on which my body was lying. I saw 
everything in the room just as before I closed my 
eyes. I did not feel any pain in i dying ' ; I felt 
only a great calm and peace." 

This first experience of being able to see every- 
thing seems to indicate that the " cord of life " is 
not actually severed at first, when the " spirit- 
body " has escaped from the body of flesh. For, 
subsequently, as our spirit friends tell us, they 
can see no physical objects without a medium be- 
ing present, but can " read our thoughts." 



THE PASSING OVER 5 

With regard to the spirit-body, Dowding 
writes : " I am still evidently in a body of some 
sort ; but I can tell yon very little about it. It is 
convenient and does not ache or tire, it seems to 
be similar in formation to my old body. There 
is a subtle difference, but I cannot attempt anal- 
ysis.'' 1 Others speak in a very similar way. 

The author of Christ in You 2 experienced the 
same thing as others describe : " Heaven is not a 
place to which you go, it is just where you are. 
You can enter i heaven ' now. Good men and 
women from time to time have made this discov- 
ery, and henceforth ' All is well. They have 
ceased to hurry, for the journey is over. They 
are no longer pilgrims and strangers, but chil- 
dren in the Father's home.' 

" The first thing we understand when we awake 
is, that there has not been any journey or passing 
over and through vast spaces. We are just 
where we always have been — at home ; but alive 
for evermore. There is no separation from any 
one we love, or from any good that is ours. To 
enter ' heaven ' is to become lifted into a larger 

i Private Dowding (J. M. Watkins), p. 13. 

2 Op. cit., pp. 48 ff (pub. by Dodd, Mead & Co.). 



6 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

consciousness of God; and in this consciousness 
we possess much more really all those whom we 
love. We are nearer to you, and we often talk 
together. There is no parting, but only greater 
unity." 

A most important injunction from the other 
side, which is repeatedly enforced by spirit writ- 
ers, is that those who are left behind are not to 
grieve for them. Useless bewailing, they say, is 
positively harmful, by distressing them, while 
they are powerless to tell you so. "What are 
the facts?" (writes Mr. Heslop to his wife). 
" When any one dies, upon awakening in their 
new surroundings they naturally think of those 
they have left behind. If they are in great hap- 
piness they long to tell their loved ones not to 
grieve for them. They want to describe their 
new and beautiful country to which they have 
come. With their clearer vision they are often 
able to guide those on earth in their human af- 
fairs, and above all they want them to realize 
how love is deeper, stronger, purer, than it ever 
was on earth. 

" Well, then, the cords of their great love draw 
them back to earth, and in spirit form they enter 



THE PASSING OVEK 7 

the old homes. Their first sorrow is their total 
inability to make their presence known. Their 
desire to comfort is unavailing; they watch the 
agony of grief, and can do nothing. In their 
distress they often seek some one of psychic de- 
velopment, and send a tender message of love and 
consolation. But, alas! too often the bereaved 
will not receive the message, they are only fright- 
ened or incredulous." 

I can confirm this experience. A friend passed 
over and soon afterwards wrote by the hand of a 
mediumistic member of our family, that he had a 
most important message for his wife. On being 
informed, she would not hear of it, and wished us 
never to refer to the matter again. The message, 
therefore, never came. 

Julia wrote through Mr. W. T. Stead's hand to 
a dear friend who was utterly broken down by 
excessive grief over the death of a beloved rela- 
tion. She wrote as follows : " My own beloved, 
what do you mean by mourning as one who has 
no hope? Is it then all mere talk that Christ 
brought life and immortality to life? Why is it 
that with the certainty of the continued exist- 
ence of your loved ones, you feel as disconsolate 



8 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

and forlorn as if there were no other world, and 
as if Christ had never triumphed over death and 
the grave? " 

The Spirit-photo (No. 21), crossed by a com- 
munication from the late Archdeacon Colley to 
the "circle" at Crewe, who meet round Mr. 
Hope, the medium, is an illustration of what all 
our friends still feel for us. This " communion 
of saints " is unbroken, if we did but all know it, 
The reader must believe it, even if he have no op- 
portunity of proving it to be true himself. 

" My dear Friends, I am sent to comfort you. 
Times seem black with every one just now, and 
you in Crewe feel the pall that now hangs over 
you nationally. May be it is the dark hour be- 
fore the dawn. Greeting to Friend Thomas and 
all of you kindly excuse more at present. T. Col- 
ley. 1 (Aug. 20, 1914.)" 

The photo was taken and developed by 
" Friend Thomas " ; whose photo thus carries the 
Archdeacon's message across it, but reversed; as 
is often the case. The message is first written on 
a " spirit-tablet " and then impressed upon the 

i Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, p. 159. (Dodd, Mead 



THE PASSING OVER 9 

photographic plate; and if held wrongly the mes- 
sage comes out reversed. This, at least, seems to 
be the explanation. 

In No. 18, also from the Archdeacon and from 
the Spirit-friends (above), it is not reversed. 
The letter is as follows : * 

" Our dear Friends, 

" Again it is our pleasure to wish each one 
of you a very happy new year. May your 
souls be flooded with the light and love of God. 
Looking back on the twelve months we see 
there have been times of difficulty, sadness, and 
much misunderstanding, but, thank God, you 
have overcome all. Now as to future events, 
we cannot tell you what will happen, but judg- 
ing by circumstances that are around you at 
present, we should say that success will attend 
your efforts; that is, if you keep your hands 
firmly clasped on those of your loved ones ; and 
when trials and difficulties meet you, just 
bring them to us and let us reason together, 
and we will do our best to help you, God will- 
ing ; for as you know we are very much inter- 

i Op. tit., p. 157. 



10 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ested in you, so again, we wish you God speed. 
We are just making way for your old and val- 
ued friend to say a few words. God bless 
you." 
" My Dear Friends, 

" I write at this, our Family Worship, my 
psychic message to let you three know I wish 
you the season's best greetings. So please give 
this to Miss S — — and the Rev. Professor 
Henslow, and I wish you all the kindly greet- 
ing. I will tell you many things soon. 
" Still faithfully yours, 

" T. COLLEY." 

No. 19 is a fragment of an old letter, for com- 
parison of the handwriting. 

Mr. Stead also tells us that " they are all press- 
ing and eager to make those loved ones mourning 
them here realize they are not dead." * As Sir 
Oliver Lodge wrote in a message to. the bereaved : 
" They would like their friends and loved ones to 
recognize that, and not to mourn unduly." 2 

On the other hand there is a peculiar trait 

i Nash's Magazine, November, 1916 (p. 163). 
2 Raymond. 



THE PASSING OVER 11 

mentioned, as characterizing many on the other 
side, for the spirits tell us that what afflicts so 
many spirits is, that they are continually endur- 
ing a longing for at first the lost things of this 
life; which they miss so much when they have 
left it. 1 

We are, however, warned against this, both by 
Christ and His apostles. Our Lord began by 
saying to Thomas, who exclaimed " My Lord and 
my God/' on seeing Him after His resurrection : 
" Because thou hast seen Me, hast thou believed ! 
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have 
believed." 

So St. Peter says to his readers : " Yet, whom, 
not having seen, ye love ; on Whom, though now 
ye see Him not, yet having faith ye rejoice 
greatly." 

Similarly St. Paul says : " We look not at the 
things which are seen, for things which are seen 
are temporal, but the things which are not seen 
are eternal." 

In other words, the true Christian looks for- 

i After Death, by " Julia," p. 12. This is corroborated by 
the writer of Christ in You; and he intimates a reason for it; 
that it is far more difficult to amend a damaged life on the 
other side, than on this earth. 



12 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ward to the future, and is never disappointed. 

St. Paul's meaning is clear. He does not con- 
demn the things of this life; but he would con- 
demn the very thing which our spirits also bid 
us not to set too high a value upon, i. e., to have 
an over-estimation of terrestrial things. If we 
do so estimate them, then, when we are taken 
away from them, the loss is naturally bewailed. 

In other words, there has been no sufficient 
preparation or " self-adaptation " for the 
changed conditions of life, which we shall dis- 
cover when it is too late for us to be prepared. 

Therefore, if a man will not begin to fit himself 
for the next world, while living in this one, i. e., 
if he will make no effort to adapt and befit him- 
self for the Kingdom of Heaven, he will join the 
discontented crowd and suffer mentally accord- 
ingly. 

We may here see the significance of the last 
verse of St. Paul's " Psalm of Love." <€ Now we 
see as in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. 
. . . But now abideth Faith, Hope and Love, but 
the greatest of these is Love/ 7 

" We live on love," says Julia from the other 
side ; " God is Love, and you too often live in the 



THE PASSING OVEK 13 

misery which is the natural and necessary result 
of the absence of God, who is Love." 

The man who spends his life upon himself, has 
no love in the religious sense; for this is simply 
an Enthusiasm for helping and doing good to 
others. 

The persistently selfish man cannot realize 
that it is " more blessed to give than to receive " ; 
nor does he understand what it is " to prefer one 
another in honour/' nor that the highest motive 
is : " Whatsoever ye do for the least of My breth- 
ren ye do it unto Me." 

On the other hand, the self-sacrificing Nurse, 
Doctor, or " Tommy," who risk their lives in sav- 
ing lives, do see, for to save a soul alive gives joy 
to them here, as it does to save it spiritually to 
the angels in Heaven. 

Agape, the Greek word for " love " here, is a 
foretaste of love hereafter, which rules the spirit- 
world ; and if one will not believe it here ; neither 
is he likely to enjoy it in the future. 

But there is always Hope, as well as Faith, 
that he will awaken to the truth ; and learn then 
that Agape is unselfishness. It is practical, and 
that is why it is the greatest of all virtues. 



14 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Nothing can surpass the " Enthusiasm of Hu- 
manity." That is the Christian Religion. 1 

With regard to our reception on the other side, 
Mr. Heslop writes as follows : " In this Home- 
land our occupations are very varied. Part of 
our work is to help and teach those who come 
here, ignorant of all spiritual life. When they 
pass from earth they are often confused when 
they wake up, so we go to them and help them to 
realize where they are. Everything being en- 
tirely spiritual here, if they have no spiritual in- 
sight, they see no beauty around them. Hence 
you may remember in reading the accounts of 
such waking to spirit-life they say that they 
found a gloomy desert land, not the loveliness at 
all which they had expected. Now when this is 
so, their distress and astonishment are very 
great; and we go to any who can see us and try 
to explain, and give comfort where we can. 

" Then, when spirits who have lived entirely 
for self come here, they are confronted with the 
record of their lives, and the revelation often 
drives them almost to despair. And we tell them 

i Jas.y 1, 27. This phrase was suggested by Sir John Seeley, 
in his Ecce Homo. 



THE PASSING OVER 15 

how the past may be redeemed, and the evil 
atoned for and undone, and take them to the 
place where they can do this, and be helped to a 
higher life. Others come timid and ignorant, 
bnt loving much. So, because they love much, 
there is a great welcome of love all ready for 
them, and we bring them the good tidings, and 
they are taught and comforted, and their weary 
spirits soothed and rested. Then, when the pure 
and noble of your world come to ours, we join 
the great company and welcome them, crying, 
'Well done, good and faithful servant, enter 
thou into the joy of thy Lord.' " 

We find a contrast to this in Private Dowd- 
ing's experience. He describes himself thus : " I 
was an orphan, somewhat of a recluse, and I 
made friends very slowly." No one met him on 
passing over, nor did he see any spirits; but 
after a time he wrote : " I am no longer alone. 
I have met my dear brother William. He could 
not get near me for a long time, he says. The 
atmosphere was so thick. He is working among 
the newly arrived and has wide experience. 

" Strange/' he writes, " that the only person I 
came across for a long time was my brother. He 



16 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

tells me that I have never been alone. The mist 
around me, shutting me off, has emanated from 
myself, he says. I suppose my loneliness of life 
and character whilst on earth have followed me 
here. I always lived in books, they were my real 
world. 

" I begin to see now that my type of mind 
would find itself isolated, or rather would ema- 
nate isolation, when loosed from earthly tram- 
mels. I shall remain near earth conditions 
whilst learning lessons I refused to learn be- 
fore. 1 

"It is dangerous to live to and for yourself. 
Tell this to my fellows with emphasis. ... I 
cannot remember doing anything really worth 
while. I never looked outside myself. " 2 

All Spirits confirm this fact, that each of us is 
responsible for his or her own special conditions 
on the other side. 

" Each of us," he writes, " creates his own pur- 
gatorial conditions. If I had my time over 
again, how differently I should live my life! I 

i Like " Julia " and others, all have to learn the duties re- 
quired by the laws of the Spirit world. 
2 Op. cit., p. 23. 



THE PASSING OVER 17 

erred, for I neither lived enough among my fel- 
low-men nor interested myself sufficiently in 
their affairs. Well, I have created my own pur- 
gatory. I must live it through somehow. Good 
night." x 

Vice-Admiral W. Osborne Moore, in his book 
Glimpses of the Newt State, has a long Appendix 
on "Waking the so-called Dead." He gives 
twelve reports of seances held with the express 
object of helping the so-called " dead " to realize 
their position, and thus assisting them to pass 
naturally into spirit-life. It often happens that 
they cannot at all understand at first that they 
are not still on earth, especially when an acci- 
dental, sudden death has occurred. The spirits 
were often identified on enquiries being made 
about them. The reports given are verbatim 
conversations taken down by a stenographer at 
the time. 

Mr. Henslop and other spirit controls speak of 
beautiful flowers on the other side. 

The photograph, No. 25, is of the Ven. Arch- 
deacon Colley, who is seen standing in the midst 
of what look like our Scarborough Lilies. It 

i Op. Git., p. 29. 



18 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

will be observed that the flowers are arranged in 
a circular manner, his head appearing through 
the middle of one flower, two buds stand erect, 
and are transparent, for his hat can be traced 
through the lower part of the flower-buds: the 
size of the flower, spread open, the lowermost is 
in circumference as large as his head and hat to- 
gether ! 

They were quite invisible to him as he stood 
for his portrait. He writes at the back of the 
plate I possess : " This psychic photograph was 
taken on December 22nd, 1909, on my own slide. 
I developed it and found that my late wife 
' Lily ' had thus again been invisibly present 
with me, as in the drawing of a lily in her psy- 
chograph to me on March 9, 1909 ; so making this 
the second symbol of her botanical name by 
which she was known and last called by me in 
Natal over thirty years ago." 

Our Lord bids us observe " how the lilies of 
the field grow," and drew a potent lesson from 
them ; so we shall be able to obey His wish on the 
other side of the veil, as well as on earth. 

Darwin was the first to draw our attention to 
the way by which animals can change their struc- 



THE PASSING OVER 19 

ture in order to adapt themselves to " changed 
conditions of life." He tells us that he discov- 
ered a rat of the Old World kind, i. e., our com- 
mon one, in an island of the Galapagos, off the 
West Coast of South America, in 1835. He 
wrote : " I can hardly doubt that this rat is 
merely a variety, produced by the new and pe- 
culiar climate and food, to which it has been sub- 
jected." x In Ascension he found two more va- 
rieties : " One is of a black colour, with fine 
glossy fur and lives on the grassy summit; the 
other is brown and less glossy, and lives near the 
sea." He then repeats what he had said before 
— that they must have " varied from the effect 
of the new conditions to which they have been ex- 
posed." 2 

Our late great botanist, Mr. G. Bentham, de- 
scribes the water-buttercup or Crowfoot, as it is 
usually called. 3 " Many of the forms it assumes 
are striking and have been distinguished as 

x l Naturalises Voyage Bound the World, p. 378. Of 
course, the change is brought about by Life; quite uncon- 
sciously by the animal, or plant. It is an automatic result of 
the Directivity in all life. 

2 Op. eit., pp. 492 ff. 

3 Handbook of the British Flora. 



20 RELIGION OF THE SPIEIT WORLD 

6 species/ but the characters, although often to a 
certain degree permanent, appear at other times 
so inconstant, and even to depend so much on 
the situation the plant grows in, that we can only 
consider them as mere varieties." 

The late Sir J. D. Hooker, however, in his 
Students' Flora of the British Isles, gives us no 
less than eight well denned " species " ; so that 
the difference between a " species " and a "va- 
riety " depends upon the opinion of the describer. 
But that all have arisen by " self -adaptation " is 
not only a matter of opinion but of experimental 
verification; for Dr. Warming, of Copenhagen, 
tells us it is " external factors which evoke nu- 
merous changes in plants," and he gives the 
names of eighteen botanists who have proved it 
by experiments. 1 

This law applies equally to man's body, hence 
have arisen the various races of Man, as Euro- 
pean, Negroes, Red Indian, etc. ; but no man, any 
more than a plant, " willed " himself to change, 
or than a pigeon, and we know that the many 
sorts of this bird have all arisen from the wild 
rock pigeon, under domestication. 

i Oecology, p. 370. 



THE PASSING OVER 21 

If we ask how can the numerous details of 
structure all change simultaneously into new 
forms in direct adaptation to the new environ- 
ment, we cannot answer the question, but can 
only recognize a Power of directing, or a " Di- 
rectivity " in Life ; in obedience to which the 
changes arise, in a manner we call " automati- 
cally," for there appears to be no consciousness 
of the changes going on, as if they were deter- 
mined by the being. 

Now, we regard God as the Creator of life; 
and, therefore, we look to Him as having en- 
dowed life with His own directing powers. Life 
is not a " force," as is sometimes said, because, as 
Sir Oliver Lodge points out, it cannot fall into 
line with all the forces known, e. g., Light, Heat, 
Electricity, etc., which can be " weighed " and 
represented in foot — pounds. Not so life: it 
escapes all attempts to estimate it in any similar 
way. 

" It, therefore, is not a force," but to use Sir 
O. Lodge's expression — it is a " Director of 
force." 

As Our Lord said : " Consider the lilies, how 
they grow." I am here doing so, and we discover 



22 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the fact that they do for themselves bodily just 
the same thing that Man is called upon to do for 
himself spiritually, for the preceding leads us to 
a parable. Man alone has something which 
transcends all other animal life. He is con- 
scious of himself. He can think: " This is I." 
He knows he can employ and direct forces and 
invent and make, say, a camera. He discovers 
his eye to be a camera and argues that Somebody 
must have made it. He thus finds he can enter- 
tain Abstract ideas, namely that of a God, that is, 
ideas, not of a material nature or appreciable by 
the senses. 

This leads him on to discover what we call 
Morality, and to frame Moral Laws; and then, 
he necessarily regards God as a Moral Being. 
He realizes the difference between right and 
wrong, and discovers he has a " conscience," and 
so reaches the notion of being a " Spiritual " 
being, as distinct from all animals. 

St. Paul contrasts the " natural," i. e. ? the 
" animal " man with the " spiritual " man ; for 
it is the " spirit," or consciousness of higher 
potters, which separates him : " Now the natural 
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; 



THE PASSING OVER 23 

for they are foolishness unto him and he cannot 
know them; because they are spiritually judged. 
But he that is spiritual judge th (discerneth) all 
things." That is, he can see and realize the 
value of the " higher life " ; i. e., morality, and 
the religious life, of which Christ is our Great 
Example. Consequently, as the animal body dis- 
appears at death, the spiritual body has lost its 
earthly accompaniment with its passions, and he 
is now solely " adapted " for the existence be- 
yond the grave. There, the spirit is everything, 
the terrestrial existence has gone for ever. The 
great lesson of earth-life is, therefore, to " adapt 
ourselves," in Character and Conduct, here, by 
the Imitation of Jesus Christ, i. e., to live in 
harmony with the requirements of the next 
world. 

This is why we are told that many on the other 
side long to return. It is because they find 
themselves unprepared and " ill-adapted " for the 
new existence, and they realize that they have 
neglected to begin to prepare by spiritual cultiva- 
tion of the soul for the next world while on 
earth. If the reader will study the second and 
third chapters of the First Epistle to the Corin- 



24 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

thians, he will realize the distinction and the 
necessity of preparing for the future. 

Thus is it that what we learn from the Spirits 
throws invaluable light, not only on the New 
Testament, but on what we are taught from 
Nature herself. 

" Consider then the Lilies of the Field, how 
they grow." We know now, and the parable they 
can teach us as well. 

Besides Our Lord's teaching from the lilies of 
the field, we all know the spiritual lesson He gave 
us from little children ; and how He blessed them 
and said : " Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." 

They are not often seen on Spirit-photographs ; 
but two are figured in my book on The Proofs of 
the Truths of Spiritualism, one of a little negress 
whom Dr. Hooper saw dairy oyantly and photo- 
graphed her (No. 12). The other of them, the 
little girl with her father, figured (No. 11) was 
an adult, assuming the appearance of a child, 
just as she was known when she left this sphere. 

I have heard the whole story from Dr. Hooper, 
and recorded it in my book ; but in brief it is as 
follows : The gentleman sitting at the table was 
a patient of the doctor's, He said one day that 



THE PASSING OVER 25 

he felt as if some one was near hiin. 1 Dr. Hooper 
saw the child clairvoyantly, and told him that 
he was quite right, as there was a beautiful little 
girl near him. He then photographed her; and 
his patient at once exclaimed it was his own 
child who had passed over thirty years pre- 
viously. It was recognized at once by others. 

This feeling as if some one was present, though 
invisible, is also mentioned by " W.T.P.," who 
published Private Dowding. He says in the 
Introductory Note: " On Monday, 12th March, 
1917, I was walking by the sea when I felt the 
presence of some one. I looked round; no one 
was in sight. All that day I felt as if some one 
were following me, trying to read my thoughts." 
In the evening he wrote automatically the first 
communication from this soldier. He went to 
France in July, 1916, and was killed in August, 

Spirits can not only " put on " the dress, but 
assume the appearance of the face of a previous 
period for the purpose of recognition or identifi- 

i Dr. Hooper is not only a medium but a great Spirit-healer. 
He was engaged in trying to help a relation of mine living in 
Canada, he himself residing in Birmingham. The patient told 
me he had felt as if some one was near him; but he had not 
been informed of the fact at the time. 



26 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

cation. 1 It is a, very comforting thought to 
know for a certainty that our little ones, even 
from birth, are at once taken in charge by loving 
foster-spirits, as we might call them, and brought 
to maturity with every loving care possible, for 
such is what is told us by spirits who write or 
talk to us about them ; fully corroborating what 
Christ said that they have their (Guardian) An- 
gels a who do always behold the face of my 
Father which is in heaven." x 

Mr. Heslop thus speaks of little children on 
the other side: 

" In the children's sphere they are cared for 
and watched over by foster parents. Only those 
are selected for this work who have special love 
for the little ones. In their schools they are 
taught entirely by object lessons. The teachers 
have power to project their thoughts in such a 
way as to produce living pictures all in move- 
ment, not stationary as yours are. When the 

i In the book mentioned I have given a spirit-photo of the 
Archdeacon Colley's Mother; who had never been photographed 
In earth life; but she told one of the circle of Crewe, who was 
both clairvoyante and clairaudienet, that she would appear as 
" he knew her " many years before. The likeness was at once 
recognized by her old friends at Leamington. 

i Matt., 18, 10. 



THE PASSING OVER 27 

lesson is over, the teacher absorbs their thought- 
forms back into herself. They gradually grow 
up to the age of perfection and are radiantly 
happy in the beauty and love that surrounds 
them." 

Julia gives us her own experiences, after pass- 
ing over to the other side. 

" When I found my friends there were about 
five or six of those relatives and near friends 
who had been on this side for some time. My 
dear little sister was the lovingest and dearest 
of all. I saw before me the semblance of her 
childhood, just as she was in the long years ago. 
When I had parted with her it seemed for ever. 
But she was only assuming the child-form to gain 
recognition. After a time, when I learned more 
about the life here, she revealed herself to me 
as we see her now, as a spirit who is a woman 
grown." 



CHAPTER II 

THE NECESSARY PRE-ACQUIRED MENTAL CONDITIONS 
FOR SECURING HAPPINESS IN THE NEXT WORLD 

" Julia " confirms Mr. Heslop, and strongly insists on the 
necessity of self -preparation for the next world. — Religion 
is Character and Conduct (Jas. I, 27). — The surprises of 
the next life. — Our permanent identity. — Like goes to like. 
— The " Loss " of the soul here, and how to regain it. — 
The " Oneness " between this and the next life. — The ap- 
parent and the real man. — Belief is not Faith. — No break 
of continuity. — The " Bridge Bureau " prepared. — Its 
value. — We " made our next life on earth." — The law of 
spiritual growth. — " The last shall be first, and the first 
last," illustrated. — The natural law of inevitable conse- 
quences in the next life, which follow on that on earth. — 
No " Judgment " from without, but " self -selection " by 
Conscience. 

The friend of the late Mr. W. T. Stead, called 
" Julia," who held long correspondences with him 
from the other side, fully corroborates all other 
spirits, that Religion on the other side, as it 
should be on this, is based on Character and Con- 
duct, namely the " Christ-like." This is what St. 
James meant by Religion when he denned it as 
follows : " Pure Religion and un denied before 

28 



PRE-ACQUIRED CONDITIONS 29 

God the Father is this — to visit the fatherless 
and widows in their affliction and to keep himself 
unspotted from the world." 

" Julia/' in After Death, observes in the second 
chapter, entitled " The Surprises of the New 
Life " : " When the soul leaves the body it re- 
mains exactly the same as when it was in the 
body . . . the mind, the knowledge, the experi- 
ences, the habits of thought, the inclinations — 
they remain exactly as they were. ... It is the 
mind which makes character. Hence, the 
thoughts and the intents of the heart, the imag- 
inations of the mind, these are the things by 
which we are judged; for it is they which make 
up and create, as it were, the real character of 
the inner self, which becomes visible after the 
leaving of the body." 

We know that " Like goes to like," by the par- 
able of Dives and Lazarus; so, too, the spirits 
tell us is the case now. 

So far from the conditions on the other side 
being " Too much like those on earth," we soon 
learn that they are " like," yet at the same time 
different, whether for the " good " or the " bad." 

Our Lord said : " What shall a man be 



30 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and 
forfeit his sonl? " 

Julia echoes this : " The worst evil of the 
present day is not its love of money, nor its 
selfishness. No, but the Loss of the Soul. You 
forget that the Soul is the thing. And that all 
that concerns the body, except so far as it affects 
the Soul, is of no importance. But what you 
have to realize is, that men and women in this 
generation have lost their souls. It is not what 
we used to think of losing the soul in hell, after 
laying aside the body. It is a thing, not of the 
future only, but of the present. Your Soul is 
lost, now; and you have to find it. You are im- 
mersed in matter and you have lost your soul! 
The loss of the Soul, that is the malady of the 
Day ; and to find this Soul is the ' Way of Sal- 
vation.' x 

" Now I will go on to speak as to how to find 
the Soul. There is only one way. There is no 
chance of salvation, if you never give yourself 
time to think on things that are timeless, that 
transcend time, that will be when time shall be 
no more. 

i After Death, p. 137, 8. 



PRE-ACQUIRED CONDITIONS 31 

" You have no time but for the things of time, 
which perish with the using. . . . You are get- 
ting less and less spiritual. What seems to 
me quite clear is, that the indifference to the 
Soul is caused by not understanding that the 
Soul is the Real Self, the only part of you which 
lasts, the ' divine ' in you, which you are sacri- 
ficing to the things of the day. 

" What I say is, that the Soul has divine pow- 
ers * ; and if you will but find your Soul, and 
develop its divine potency, there is open before 
you a New Heaven and a New Earth, in which 
Absence is not, nor Death, and where the whole 
Universe of Love is yours." 

The soul is, in fact, indicated by Character and 
Conduct, which makes the Character. 

Mr. Stead says he thought: " I wonder if the 
new life surprised Julia much." Instantly she 
wrote: "Yes. I was not prepared for such 

i What Julia appears to mean by " divine powers " would 
seem to be what is called the " Spirit " of man ; that is the 
attributes of self-consciousness, the power of abstract reason- 
ing, hence the conception of God; the consciousness of the 
power of choice, with its consequence of the recognition of 
right and wrong, or of Good and Evil. Hence man alone can 
be moral. All animals are non-moral and act by mental au- 
tomatism. 



32 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

' oneness 7 in the life on both sides. When the 
soul leaves, it remains exactly the same as when 
it was in the body ; the soul is only the real self 
which uses the mind and the body as its instru- 
ments, and has no longer the uses or the needs of 
the body. 

" The most extraordinary thing which came to 
my knowledge when I passed over, was the dif- 
ference between the apparent man and the real 
self. It gave quite a new meaning to the warn- 
ing ' Judge not,' for the real self is built up even 
more by the use it makes of the mind than by 
the use it makes of the body. There are here 
men who seemed to be vile and filthy to their 
fellows, who are far, far superior, even in purity 
and holiness to men who in life kept an outward 
veneer of apparent goodness while the mind 
rioted in all wantonness. It is the mind (which 
prompts or decides conduct) that makes char- 
acter. Hence the thoughts and intents of the 
heart, the imaginations of the mind (which are 
the moving springs of conduct) these are the 
things by which we are judged; for it is they 
which make up and create as it were the real 
character of the inner self, which becomes visible 



PKE-ACQUIRED CONDITIONS 33 

after the leaving of the body." So the publicans 
and harlots entered the Kingdom of Heaven 
while the Scribes and Pharisees were excluded. 

If this be true, and it cannot be denied that 
our Lord preached the same teaching; we have 
gone wrong in laying too much stress on believing 
theological dogmas and Creeds; as if Belief of 
itself were soul-saving. Belief concerns the head 
— love, the heart. 

" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou 
shalt be saved " would be true had the Greek 
word been rightly translated by " have faith in." 
But St. James — our Lord's own brother — 
adds: " Faith without works (i. e., conduct) is 
dead/' by which he meant " Belief." " Belief " 
is only the beginning of conviction that Christ- 
life is the best possible example we can have. 
Belief must be developed into Faith, involving 
the determination to imitate Him and so live the 
" Christ-life " ourselves, and thereby prove our- 
selves worthy to be called " Christians." 

On the other hand we all know the opening 
sentence of the Athanasian (so-called) Creed, 
while to " believe " that Christ is " divine " is 
another " belief " which is thought to qualify a 



34 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

man as being a " Christian " without works. 

As other spirits say, so Julia more than once 
writes : " There is no sudden transformation. 
You are here as you were. There is no break of 
continuity. You start where you left off, what 
you are you remain, until you endeavour to im- 
prove. 

" You will find that we, on this side, who have 
been able to see and feel and know that God is 
love, will also tell you that love, no more on this 
side than on yours, precludes pain and sorrow 
and the phenomena of imperfection. We have 
not attained, we ' press forward to the mark 
of our high calling ' here as there. Think you 
that we are transfigured into the fulness of His 
glory because the earthly home of our taber- 
nacle is dissolved? Nay, verily. We are as we 
are, when our earthly garment decays, we re- 
main. 

" The increase of this sense of the continuity 
of existence, of the reign of law and of the re- 
sponsibility of time for eternity, and all that that 
implies, will have the greatest changes that your 
Bureau can make." 1 

i Op. cit. } pp. 100-101. The Bureau for intercommunication 



-- - ; • "• -- - ■■■' '■'■■■ ■■ '■ - 



PRE-ACQUIRED CONDITIONS 35 

The chief change (writes Julia) that will be 
made by the " Bridge Bureau " will be to in- 
crease to a quite inconceivable extent the con- 
sciousness of responsibilities. " You may think 
it strange that the verification of another life 
should increase the importance of yours; but 
such is the fact, and you can never understand 
the importance of your life until you see it from 
this side. You are never, for one moment, idle 
from influencing eternity. You may think this 
is a figure of speech, but it is not. You are, 
far more really than you imagine, making this 
world of ours (for yourself) in that world of 
yours." 

( " You make your own life," writes Mr. Stead 
in a heading. ) 

"Yes, that is a manufactured article, so to 
speak. You are, in the loom of time, weaving' 
the fabric of this world. You make your next 
life. Yes, and you make your life on earth. 
You make your next life. You do it day by day, 
you do it hour by hour." 

" The Law of Spiritual Growth " is the subject 

was established until Mr. W. T. Stead lost his life in the 
Titanic. 



36 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

of the Fifth Communication from Julia to the 
late Mr. Stead. It runs as follows : — 

" Spiritual growth depends upon love and serv- 
ice ; and you limit the area of both when you put 
a wall of iron between the spheres. . . . Life is 
ministry and sacrifice and service and love. . . . 

" As Jesus saved us, we also must save others, 
walking so far as we can in our Lord's steps. . . . 
Do you think that we on this side, because we 
live more visibly in the presence of God, and are 
more consciously in the light of the love of our 
Lord, therefore love less those whom we loved on 
earth? I tell you, nay, it is quite the opposite. 
We love them more and more and more continu- 
ally, as we grow in grace and in the knowledge 
of the Lord." 

Julia, who had been in the Spirit-world for 
several years, and speaks from experience says: 
" On this side things seem so topsy-turvy. The 
first are last, the last first. I see convicts and 
murderers and adulterers, who worked their 
wickedness out in the material sphere, standing 
far higher in the scale of purity and of holiness 
than some who never committed a crime; but 
whose minds as it were, were the factory and 



PRE-ACQUIRED CONDITIONS 37 

breeding ground of thoughts which are the seed 
of crimes in others. I do not mean by this that 
it is better to do crimes than to think them ; only 
that the doing is not always to be taken as proof 
of wicked-heartedness." 

Instances of such have been described in the 
war; burglars and drunkards have risked their 
lives to save others, such is the noblest kind of 
Christian Love (agape). 

What do we learn from this? Simply just 
what Christ and His Apostles told us: Faith 
(not only Belief) and Works; Words and deeds 
are necessary. Character and Conduct are the 
Sole Tests in the next world, but to be first ac- 
quired in This. 

This conclusion to be drawn, is the greatest 
fact of importance thus revealed by Spiritualism, 
with the inevitable consequences which follow 
the life here. There is no judgment in the popu- 
lar sense of the word, but exactly what Christ 
taught, namely, natural results; as shown in the 
parable of Dives and Lazarus and in the imagi- 
nary scene of the Last Day. It is clear that those 
whom the King " separates " as " sheep " from 
those as " goats " have become so by their own 



38 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

habits of life — Character and Conduct — so 
that they are " self -judged " by their own Con- 
sciences. 

Dives was in " purgatory " in consequence of 
his neglect of his " duty " to Lazarus, for he did 
not help him of his own free-will. 

Spirits fully corroborate this. I once knew a 
man who "lived solely for himself.'' His wife 
once told me she " never saw him except at meal- 
times." He died, and our spirits said he was in 
" purgatory," and is still there) after several 
years. 



CHAPTER III 

man's conception of god; man and his duties, 
here and hereafter 

Imperator's teaching about God, and how He is regarded 
in the higher spheres.— The fallacy of the "Fall."— To; 
learn man's progressive development leads to knowledge 
and happiness. — Man's responsibilities for Progress, Cul- 
ture and Purity. — To which we must add Love or Enthusi- 
asm of humanity. — The rejectors of Christ may be com- 
pared with those who repudiate Spiritualism. — Mr. Moses' 
position of hesitation — a transitional mental condition. — . 
Imperator sympathizes with him, but the difficulties of the 
Sadducees were greater. — Can any good thing come from a 
carpenter? — Mr. Moses now grasps what he could not re- 
alize before. — He recognizes Imperator as "truthful, con- 
sistent and external to himself, and that his teaching is 
elevating " ; — a temporary reaction. — " Can it be due to 
Satan in the garb of an Angel of Light?" — Imp er aft or 
appeals to the purity of his teaching as its warranty. — 
The Bible and inspiration considered by the Author of 
Christ in You, who follows the teaching of Imperator. — 
The meaning of " Bread " in a spiritual sense as a Symbol 
of Christ and of His Church. — Returning to Imperator, 
he speaks of the spiritual influence of the Bible and explains 
the error of the early transcribers, e. g., certain laws of 
King Hammurabi's Code (in the time of Abram) embod- 
ied in Exodus and Leviticus. — The Old Testament shows the 
progressive ideas until we reach the prophets. — St. John 
the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. 



40 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

In reply to a question by Rev. Stainton Moses, 
as to whether Imperator's teaching might not be 
regarded as implying Deism, Theism or to some, 
even Atheism, he said : " Doubtless we teach 
that there is one Supreme Being over all; one 
who is not manifested as man has fancied, but 
who has always announced to His creatures from 
time to time, such facts about Himself as they 
were able to comprehend; or more strictly has 
enabled them to develop in their minds truer 
views of Himself and of His dealings. We tell 
you, as Jesus told His followers, of a loving, 
holy, pure God, who guides and governs the 
universe ; who is no impersonal conception of the 
human mind, but a real spiritual Father ; a really 
existent Being, albeit known to you only by His 
operations, and through your conceptions of His 
nature and attributes. 1 

" But though we have not seen Him, we know 
yet more and more of the fathomless perfection 

i Spirit Teachings, p. 119. This book was written by Rev. 
Stainton Moses, being dictated by Imperator, and taken down 
by automatic handwriting. It contains some 100,000 words; 
yet it is only a portion of the entire quantity of communica- 
tions. It should be carefully studied by all interested in Re- 
ligion in the next world. (Office of Light.) 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 41 

of His nature, through a more intimate acquaint- 
ance with His works. We know, as you cannot, 
the power and wisdom, the tenderness and love 
of the Supreme. We trace it in a thousand ways 
which you cannot see. We feel it in a thousand 
forms which never reach your lower earth. And 
while you, poor mortals, dogmatize as to His es- 
sential attributes and ignorantly frame for your- 
selves a being like unto yourselves, we are content 
to feel and to know His power as the operation of 
a Wise and Loving and All-pervading Intelli- 
gence. His government of the Universe reveals 
Him to us as potent, wise and good. His deal- 
ings with ourselves we know to be tender and 
loving. 

" The past has been fruitful of mercy and lov- 
ing-kindness ; the present has been instinct with 
love and tender considerations; into the future 
we do not pry. We are content to trust it in the 
hands of One Whose power and love we have 
experienced. And we do not, as curious mortals 
please themselves with imagining, picture a fu- 
ture which has its origin in our own intelligence 
and is disproved by each advancement in knowl- 
edge. We trust Him too really to care to specu- 



42 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

late. We live for Him and to Him. We strive 
to learn and do His will, sure that in so doing 
we shall benefit ourselves and all created things 
whom we tend; the while we pay to Him the 
honour which is His due, and the only homage 
which His Majesty can accept. We love Him; 
we worship Him ; we adore Him ; we obey Him ; 
but we do not question His plans, nor pry into 
His mysteries." 

As Imperator pointed out the fallacy of the 
dogma of Atonement, so does he that of the 
" Fall." 

" Of man " (he says) " we know more than we 
are permitted to tell, as yet we are not charged to 
gratify curiosity, nor to open out to you views 
and speculations which would but bewilder your 
mind. Of the origin of man, you may be content 
to know that the day will come when we shall be 
able to tell you more certainly of his spiritual 
nature, its origin and destiny; whence it came 
and whither it is going. For the present you 
may know that the theological story of a Fall 
from a state of purity to a state of sin, as usually 
detailed and accepted is misleading. . . . You 
may better direct your attention for the present 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 43 

to man's condition as an incarnated spirit and to 
seek to learn how progressive development, in 
obedience to the laws which govern him, leads to 
happiness in the present and advancement in the 
immediate future. ... It is important that we 
should speak of man's duty and work in the 
earth-life. Man is a spirit temporarily enshrined 
in a body of flesh, a spirit with a spiritual body 
which is to survive its severance from the earth 
body. This spiritual body it is the object of 
your training in the sphere of probation to de- 
velop and fit for its life in the sphere of spirit. 
That life, so far as it concerns you to know, is 
endless. You cannot grasp what eternity means. 
. . . Sufficient now that we demonstrate to you 
enduring existence, and intelligence existing 
after the death of the physical body." 

Imperator then briefly describes what man, as 
a " responsible spiritual being," must do, under 
the term " Progress, in knowledge of himself 
and all that makes for spiritual development. 
Culture, not in one direction but all ; and Purity 
in thought, word and act." 

Respecting his duty to his neighbours, it is 
summed up in Charity (A.V.), i. e.. Love (R.V.), 



44 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

or, better, " Enthusiasm of humanity " (Seeley) . 

Imperator's expression, " Knowledge of him- 
self," reminds one of a lately discovered " Saying 
of Jesus," discovered in the ruins of Oxyrhyncus: 

" Jesus saith, Ye ask ' who are those that draw 
us to the Kingdom, if the Kingdom is in 
Heaven? ' The fowls of the air, and all the 
beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, 
and the fishes of the sea, these are they which 
draw you, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within 
you ; and whoever shall know himself shall find it. 
Strive therefore to know yourselves, and ye shall 
be aware that ye are the sons of the Almighty 
Father; and ye shall know that ye are in the City 
of God, and ye are the city." 

To know thyself, therefore, is to find one's soul. 
As long as time and sense, the outward things of 
life, the material world, the work of the flesh and 
the pride of life are all in all to us, then self, the 
true spiritual self, is forgotten and lost. 

Imperator draws a comparison between those 
who rejected Jesus Christ and His teaching, and 
the unbelievers in Spiritualism today, who scorn 
the teaching they give us. Mr. Moses writes: 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 45 

" The parallel is comprehensible," and he thinks 
it was excusable. He says he is not like having 
one in the flesh to talk to, but an intangible, irre- 
sponsible " impersonal influence " to deal with. 
" I have nothing to lay hold of. As for you 
(i. e., Imperator) I know nothing of you, even 
if you be an entity at all. But on the whole I 
wish that you would leave me alone ! " This was 
written as a heading to the 14th Section. There 
are 33 Sections in all. Before the end came, 
Kev. S. Moses fully accepted Imperator's teach- 
ing because, as he says : — " I found it to be in 
exact accordance with Christ's teaching," only 
having been brought up to believe in the im- 
portance of ecclesiastical dogmas, he did not see 
that to live the Christ-life IS Christianity and 
nothing else. Mr. Moses describes his conflict as 
follows : " I had in fact become wearied out 
with this strenuous conflict between my own 
strongly-conceived opinions and those of an In- 
telligence so powerful in statement and so co- 
herent in argument. I was torn by conflicting 
emotions, and undergoing, in doubt, a state of 
preparation necessary for what was to follow." 
Imperator replies : " Friend, we sympathize 



46 KELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WOBLD 

with your questionings, and will try to aid you. 
You say that the sceptical Sadducee was better 
off, in that he had the definite personal Jesus 
before him. Doubtless he had; but so far from 
that being a help to him, it would be an addi- 
tional cause of perplexity. He would find it far 
harder to associate the son of the Carpenter of 
Nazareth with God's new revelation than you 
do to associate us with the supreme. . . . For 
he would see all around him the tangible and 
palpable difficulties which he could not sur- 
mount. 

" With you the case is otherwise. You have to 
deal with no external difficulties. You have sim- 
ply to battle with intellectual doubt. You know 
and acknowledge that the words which have been 
spoken to you are such as you might reasonably 
expect from a teacher sent from God. They are 
fraught with a message, the need of which you 
feel, the beauty of which you admit, and the 
moral grandeur of which commends itself to all 
who are fitted to receive it. You know full well 
that it originates in some source external to your- 
self. You must know that no unconscious ef- 
fort of your own mind could produce that which 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 47 

contradicts the outcome of your own thoughts. 
When this phase of doubt through which you are 
now passing has gone, you will wonder how you 
can ever have imagined that I am not an entity 
as real as yourself, as real as any embodied in- 
telligence whom you call ( Man.' . . . 

" You say that you know nothing of me. Why 
will you confuse the messenger with his message? 
Why will you insist on associating with that 
which is Divine the vehicle through which it is 
conveyed?" 

Mr. Moses tells us later what was the result in 
himself : " I began to grasp, as I had been un- 
able to grasp before, the tendency of the teach- 
ing, and to separate it from the individuality of 
the messenger. I grasped, as I could not grasp 
before, what was to me, in very truth, a new 
Kevelation. The messenger became lost in the 
importance to me of his message ; and the desire 
to probe and prove minute points of detail was 
lost in the full blaze of conviction that then first 
burst upon me. ... I estimated the experience 
of a year, during which I could discover no de- 
parture from strict truth. And I came clearly 
to the conclusion that the Power which was in 



48 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

action was: (1) External to myself ; (2) Truth- 
ful and consistent in its statements; (3) Pure 
and elevated in the religious teaching which it 
conveyed." 

Mr. Moses fills nearly two pages with his 
thoughts. Imperator replies : " You must bide 
your time as patiently as may be; meantime the 
training is valuable to you. You will know the 
why as you knew it not before ; and impulse and 
enthusiasm will yield to experimental knowledge 
and carry conviction. The venerable belief 
which has been assented to, rather than accepted, 
will pale before the knowledge of truth which is 
born of investigation and logical analysis. What 
we have said merits the deepest study: We 
claim to be judged by our whole communion with 
you, by words and deeds alike; by the moral 
effect of our teaching, no less than by its relation 
to previous needs; by the spiritual atmosphere 
which we bring with us, no less than by the im- 
perfect utterances in which logical subtlety may 
readily find a flaw." 

Speaking of the true use of the Bible, the 
Author of Christ in You thus explains it : " The 
real value of the Bible is in the spiritual or in- 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 49 

spired writer, who has opened your understand- 
ing to the things of God. . . . Millions of people 
have been lifted by it, by their belief in it. In 
this we recognize the working of a law unknown 
to you. I can best explain it as the law of trans- 
migration. The working out is as follows: 
You can lift everything into the highest place, 
until it becomes transmuted and purified, chang- 
ing into very gold the basest metal of earth. 
This is the philosopher's stone, the transmuta- 
tion into heavenly values by our faith in absolute 
truth. 

" I am putting this key into your hands, that 
you too may begin even now to turn every ex- 
perience into an opportunity to lift it into the 
highest until it becomes purified, transmuted to 
pure gold tried in the fire of God * ; and not only 
this, but it returns to you a thousand fold, filled 
with richest meaning 2 for all time." 

" The Bible has become to you THE Book ; but 
I would also have you know that God has in- 
spired men and women with power to reveal, in 
our own time, even greater things, and ever fresh 
unfoldings from the heart of life. Above all 

i Matt, 10, 42. 2 Luke, 6, 38. 



50 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

things, we want you to have the open vision to- 
day, for greater things are coming, and God is 
doing wonders among you. Rejoice in the new 
revelation, abounding in hope. The new will 
reveal the old to you afresh. Have no doubts. 
Launch out into the deeps of God, and fear not. 
Eternity is now." * 

With regard to " Inspiration," the writer of 
Christ in You says : " Inspiration is the one 
spirit using for its channels many books and 
many methods; it is ever seeking avenues to 
pour out the abundant wealth and wisdom of 
God. Inspiration is possible to all men. That 
you can from the spiritual plane use sense or 
empty words, so that they become vehicles of 
spiritual power, is a great and glorious truth. 
This, too, is genius, for God has spoken, and the 
ordinary language of time and sense is made 
eternal and spiritual. 

" In just this way, Jesus took the word ' bread,' 
and gave it a holy and spiritual meaning. When 
we pray : ' Give us this day our daily bread ' we 

1 Christ in You, pp. 39 ff. This is a valuable little book, evi- 
dently taken down by automatic handwriting. (Dodd. Mead 
& Co.) 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 51 

are using words of great and significant meaning 
— seeking the nourishment that shall sustain us 
in very deed. In all things we are to bring real- 
ity and truth where nothingness and limitation 
have made chaos and darkness." 

With regard to this reference to bread, it is 
customary to suppose that by " daily bread," 
Christ meant an actual loaf, and not solely a 
spiritual gift, as in all other sentences of the 
Lord's Prayer. But to ask for a loaf is equiva- 
lent to asking for the money to buy it; and to 
expect a coin to come to each and all who say this 
prayer every day, is to ask for a miracle. Where 
are the coins to come from? 

On the other hand, the bread will only come 
through working for it : Laborare est orare. 

Our Lord has so clearly shown us what He 
meant by bread, when contrasting Himself with 
the manna, and in the Lord's Supper, viz., that 
while the "loaf" represents His body, which 
stands for the Church; so His Flesh repre- 
sents His Character which all "the members 
of His body " or of His Church are to 
possess. The Author quoted therefore, seems 



52 RELIGION OF THE SPIEIT WORLD 

to be nearer the truth than is the general inter- 
pretation of a material rather than a spiritual 
bread. 

Imperator gives an epitome of the development 
of early man's progress under the spiritual influ- 
ence of chosen men. He thus writes of the Old 
Testament : 

"It is well that we warn you that you must 
learn to discriminate in the ancient records be- 
tween that which is record of fact and that which 
is only expression of belief. The writings which 
give the history of those early days are full of in- 
consistent statements. They were not the com- 
pilation of their reputed authors, but were com- 
piled from traditional beliefs, in a far later age, 
at a time when history had merged into legend, 
and much of mere opinion and belief had become 
stamped with the mark of authenticity. So 
though it be most true that fact is embodied in 
these records, as indeed in the sacred books of 
other faiths, you must beware how you accord 
implicit belief to every isolated statement con- 
tained in them. Hitherto you have read these 
stories from a standpoint of unquestioning as- 
sent. It is needful now that you study them in a 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 53 

new light — one more profitable and not less in- 
teresting, 1 

" God did not associate with man after the an- 
thropomorphic fashion described in Genesis ; nor 
did He personally govern a favoured nation save 
through His selected instruments. His dealings 
with man have been uniform through the ages — 
intimate in proportion as man cultivated spiritu- 
ality, remote as his animal nature asserts itself, 
and he becomes corporal and material in his in- 
stincts." 

Imperator then passes in review the work of 
Abram, Melchizedeck, Moses and Elijah, and then 
replies to the question by Mr. Moses : " As to the 
Pentateuch, is it the work of one author? " 

" The books to which you refer are the com- 
pilation of the days of Ezra. They were com- 
piled from the more ancient records, which were 
in danger of being lost, and some parts of which 

i Spirit Teachings, p. 184, f. The above was written on Nov. 
2, 1873; the same year in which Mr. G. Smith's discoveries in 
Babylon were published; while Dr. Sayce's Hibbert Lectures 
were delivered in 1887; and his work on the Religions of An- 
cient Egypt and Babylonia in 1902. So that Imperator i 8 in- 
formation preceded the great discoveries in Babylonian Litera- 
ture, showing resemblances and even identities between the ear- 
liest chapters in Genesis and Babylonian accounts. 



54 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

had to be supplied from tradition or memory. 
The original records of the days previous to 
Moses did not exist, and the record which you 
have in Genesis is partly imaginary, partly leg- 
endary and partly the transcript of records. 
The account of the Creation and the story of the 
Deluge are legendary. 1 The account of the 
Egyptian Ruler, Joseph, is transcribed from rec- 
ords. But in no case are the books as they now 
stand the work of their reputed authors. They 
are the compilation of Ezra and his scribes and 
do but embody the conceptions and legends of the 
period. The accounts which concern the Mosaic 
Law are more exact, because precise records of 
the Code were preserved as sacred books and 
from these the particulars were drawn up." 2 

The preceding quotation is particularly inter- 
esting, referring to the Mosaic Law; because we 
now know that several of the laws ( e. g., in Exo- 
dus, ch. 21, and Leviticus, ch. 6) are almost 
verbatim quotations from Hammurabi's Code, 
which consists of upwards of 200 laws. He was 
King of Babylon in the time of Abraham, in the 

i Both are now traceable to Babylon. 
2 Spirit Teachings, p. 188, f. 



MAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD 55 

third Millennium, B.C. The English transla- 
tion appeared in 1903. 

The reader will probably now know that the 
story of Adam and Eve, and of the Flood as re- 
corded in Genesis, can be paralleled by accounts 
discovered in Babylon, and fully described by 
Dr. Sayce and others. Indeed a picture of pre- 
sumably Adam and Eve, or their representatives, 
with the date-tree and erect serpent was found on 
a Babylonian seal and is figured in The Sacred 
Tree. 

The Old Testament represents the progress 
which men made in the conception of God in the 
most primitive times till Christ appeared to re- 
veal Him in the flesh. Imperator observes: 
" Man has progressed in knowledge since the 
days when he feigned for himself a vacillating, 
puny God who repented and was grieved at the 
failure of his plans in man's creation, and who 
was compelled to undo them as a failure. If you 
seek for conceptions more sublime and true you 
will go to a later age; when man had unlearned 
somewhat of his folly and had ceased to be con- 
tent with a God framed after the devices of a bar- 
barous imagination and undeveloped mind. The 



56 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

barbarous age could grasp nothing nobler, and 
accordingly nothing nobler could be revealed. 
That is in accordance with the universal prac- 
tice, viz., that God's revelation is proportional to 
man's mental plane. The error has been that 
you have laboured to perpetuate these foolish 
and crude views. They have been held by your 
theologians to be of Divine "inspiration," bind- 
ing for all time. This fallacy we desire utterly 
to uproot. 

St. John Baptist was the fore-runner of Jesus 
Christ, but he was still a legalist. He preached 
practical morality, in obedience to the old laws 
written on tables of stone; whereas Christ 
preached the same and more, as natural laws on 
the fleshly table of the heart; hence the least in 
the Kingdom of Heaven was greater than He ; for 
the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 

Laws in the next world to be learnt and obeyed. — Duties 
are appointed to the new arrivals. — We must not be too in- 
quisitive as to our future conditions, but there is great 
promise for students. — The most important Law governing 
the Here and the Hereafter is illustrated by the parable of 
Dives and Lazarus. — Missionary spirits cannot help if the 
man in " purgatory " will not try to help himself. — The 
cruel German soldier. — Purgatory may be long, but that 
depends upon the sufferer's will. — It is more difficult to 
recover on the other side than on earth. — There is no vicari- 
ous atonement or substitution. — The meaning of salvation is 
spiritual health of the soul. — The renunciation of sin, not 
dependent on any atonement, is necessary to be made by all. 
— A Psychograph on Resurrection received from the other 
side. 

All spirits agree in saying that they have to 
obey laws. Thus Dr. F. D. Monck (Adanijah) 1 

1 1 have reproduced some of Monck's writings to the late 
Archdeacon Colley in my book The Proofs of the Truths of 
Spiritualism. He was a great friend of the Archdeacon for 
many years before he passed over. He always spelt Adanijah 
with an a instead of an o in earth life, and having retained this 
on the other side still does so. These two agreed upon two 
proofs of his identity in future communications before he 
died ; one was to add the accompanying figure, here reproduced. 
See p. 196 in Proofs. 
57 



58 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

says : " I am privileged to write, etc." So it was 
with Julia. 

A Guardian Angel, or " guide/' sent to meet 
Julia on passing over, observed : " I am sent to 
teach you the laws of the new life." 

Julia and her new friend went to where her old 
friends were; who, she says, " told me that I must 
learn its laws and endeavour to be as useful as I 
could. The spirit friends had their life much as 
it was here. They lived and loved, and if they 
had not to work for their daily bread they had 
still plenty to do." 1 

Similarly our " domestic " spirit-friends re- 
plied to a question from myself on these matters : 
" The Little Man is too matter of fact for the 
next world. He will have to wait till he gets 
here before he puts things down as facts. We 
have to obey orders and are not allowed to say 
things which we may not tell you." 

I suppose they meant what I should call " sci- 
on shaking hands with the Archdeacon, when controlling 
Dr. Hooper in a trance, he always interlocked his fingers with 
those of the Archdeacon in a prearranged manner. 

i After Death, p. 2. This lady had been on earth a friend 
of the late W. T. Stead, and wrote this book by means of his 
hand. 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 59 

entific evidence." I ask too many questions 
which they are sometimes unable, at others, not 
allowed, to answer. Nevertheless, I trust my 
readers will be quite satisfied with the amount of 
facts I have accumulated of evidence in The 
Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, as well as 
in this. Beyond that we must live in Hope and 
Faith, and all will be well with us if we supple- 
ment these with Agape or Love. 1 

Julia's hint about learning affords a good 
promise for Students. "There is one passion 
that increases rather than diminishes on this 
side, and that is the desire to know and learn. 
We have so much to learn and such facilities. 
We shall never be able to say we know everything 
about this world, for the marvellous wisdom of 
God is past finding out. When we reach what 
we think the ultimate, there is a new vista of 
marvels which we see before us. We pass 
through, and when we come to a stand, beyond 
us again stretches a new invisible marvel-world, 
into which we also may at some new stage of 
development begin to see." 

Our spirits say that the inclination to work on 

i/ Cor., 12, 13. 



60 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the other side is put into the minds of the new- 
comers ; i. e., presumably if it is not there al- 
ready acquired on this side. 

There is one of the spiritual laws on the other 
side which cannot be too strongly impressed on 
all before they pass over. Occasions arose, more 
than once while I was compiling this book, to al- 
lude to it, but I shall repeat it here with an illus- 
tration. It may be expressed thus : The sinner's 
self-regrets caused by his consequent mental suf- 
ferings are of no avail for any mental mitigation 
until he realizes that he has sinned against a lov- 
ing God and Christ. The moment a true spark 
of real repentance is visible, then God's spiritual 
messengers are ever eagerly waiting to help him 
or her and come at once to do so. 

All spirit writers who deal with this subject 
are unanimous in agreement on this. It agrees 
perfectly with Our Lord's parable of the Rich 
Man and Lazarus. He prays to " Father Abra- 
ham " to send Lazarus — whom he never cared to 
help in his life — " that he may dip the tip of his 
finger in water and cool my tongue." So far from 
showing any regrets for his callous behaviour, he 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 61 

now wants Lazarus to serve him ; utterly uncon- 
scious that he has been shirking God's Law of 
humanity all his life. 

Abraham refuses at once, just as the mission- 
ary spirits, however willing to help they may be, 
cannot help one who will not help himself. 
" The great gulf " stands for that state of men- 
tal repulsion to repent, to which the rich man had 
brought himself by years of self-indulgence, and 
it will require years of his best efforts to conquer 
it on the other side. 

The following incident occurred when our own 
spirit-friends took the occasion to impress upon 
us the same law. The lady's hand suddenly be- 
gan to write, but in such a rapid way that she 
could not make out what it was. Moreover, the 
words did not seem to be English. On asking 
our spirit friends to explain it, if possible, they at 
once replied saying : " It is a German who says 
that he has been dreadfully wicked and asks you 
to pray for him. He says he has killed Belgian 
women and strangled a priest. We think he can- 
not be speaking the truth ; but he really wants to 
be forgiven for his sins ; but we do not think he 



62 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

knows what he is asking for. He is miserable 
and wants relief from his misery. He says he 
was shot through the heart." 

A week later the German wrote again, but the 
lady could not read what he wrote, but could only 
infer from his agitation that he was still in the 
same state of distress. 

I then asked our spirit friends why the German 
soldier (like the suicide described in Spirit-Psy- 
chometry) came to seek relief from this side, and 
not from those on the other. The reply was as 
follows : 

" We do not think you realize the situation. 
We will explain why they apply on earth. It is 
because they are in a dreadful trouble and fly to 
anybody they can to try to get out of it. We 
want to explain to you that they do appeal to us 
too ; but they are not really repentant so we can 
do nothing until they are truly repentant. They 
have a great deal to go through before they can be 
really penitent. We will tell you anything you 
like." 

Another spirit-writer says with regard to Re- 
pentance and Remorse: "I am anxious to im- 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 63 

press upon mortals how much more difficult it is 
here, than even upon earth, to resist the evil in- 
fluences around ; even although the sufferings are 
so intense; but all appears so hopeless. Thus 
the unhappy spirits may remain in such a state 
even for centuries, especially as it is repentance, 
not remorse which must be awakened; grief for 
their sins; not anger at the penalty incurred. A 
little progress, however, being made, they thirst 
for more, and thus by degrees they may reach 
the next sphere. But again and again a kind of 
apathy seems to take possession of them; and 
sometimes they even retrograde, so that the prog- 
ress through the lower spheres is generally very 
lengthened." 

But good spirits are untiring in their efforts to 
help these wretched ones. Their Love is insatia- 
ble in the cause of salvation. 

There is one short lesson in Christ in You on 
" Renunciation," i. e., the turning to God in 
Christ from sin. Like Imp erator y this unknown 
spirit-writer has not a word to say of any 
" Atonement " or " Substitution " made by 
Christ for man ; for the changes must always be 



64 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

done by us, ourselves. It can never be done 
" for " us; i. e., as it is wrongly thought, " in- 
stead of ourselves making them." 

Sin is often compared with disease, and the 
Vulgate in translating the Greek word for " Sal- 
vation " used the Latin word solus L e., 
" health " ; for it meant the " saving " of the soul 
from sin. That was why he was called " Jesus," 
according to St. Matthew's Gospel. 

" Renunciation " — continues the writer — im- 
plies a complete and deliberate stand for Truth, 
abandoning all else. It is the step which, once 
taken, opens up before you the Christ existence. 
It is not, as supposed, the giving up of wealth, 
position and friends to become poor and desolate ; 
it is rather withdrawal from submission and obe- 
dience to the prince of this world — the creation 
of moral sense — that you may deliberately fol- 
low the Christ in every thought, renouncing all 
other rights over you. Thus, Renunciation be- 
comes Acquisition. You lay down, in order to 
take up; but with a great difference. 

" You are a spiritual being sent out from God 
to do His work and will. The material plane is 
your place of action and your work commences 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 65 

with the dawning consciousness of God. Your 
scriptures are full of this teaching; Jesus has 
gone every step of the way for your guidance. 
There are pathfinders in your midst today. Fol- 
low Me, says Christ, and the spiritual and real 
man renounces all, to follow the King." To walk 
as He walked, says St. John, for that is Union 
with Christ. 

The writer concludes this " Lesson " with the 
following words : 

" At present you are to conquer " the fleshly 
body, ruling in love, but always ruling. There 
is a beautiful work before you. Jesus said: 
" The prince of this world cometh and hath noth- 
ing in Me." These were words of life and power. 
These may be your words too, so that nothing 
can touch you, hidden in God, doing His work 
and willing His will. You may reach the place 
where you no longer hear two voices, but one 
only — that of the living Christ. 

The Renunciation of Sin and the self-applica- 
tion to w T ork for Christ involves a spiritual resur- 
rection. 

I insert, therefore, here a Sermon preached by 
the late Ven. Archdeacon Colley in his Church at 



66 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Stockton (Warwickshire). It came, as shown 
by the Replica of the photographic plate, as de- 
scribed by the Archdeacon himself. (No. 41.) 
Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, p. 299. 

SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION 

BEING A SERMON for Eastee 

WRITTEN BY NO MORTAL FINGERS 

on a half photo-plate sealed up from all access of 

(== light as we understand it) and held between 

the twelve hands of six Christian Spiritualists for 

thirty-nine seconds, 

Wednesday evening, March 9, 1910, as one of the many 

11 signs following " our Domestic Worship of Prayer and 

Praise. 



" Friends 

At present we would like to speak to you on the subject of 

the spirit-world and the destiny of man. 
The thought of a future state in relationship to man, has in 

some form or other ever been opposed and 
frowned upon by men of sceptical minds. To go no further 

back than the days of the great Teacher Jesus, 
we find there existed a sadducean class, who denied all future 

existence to man. They said there were 
no spirits either of angels or men; and therefore regarded 

the stupendous doctrine of the resurrection 
of humanity as a fanciful thing, and denounced it as such. 

In these modern times infidelity has 
become more rampant and positive, and has endeavoured to 

the very utmost, to confirm and 
establish its most repulsive and cheerless theories by deduc- 
tions of science. Not a single science 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 67 

has ever been found out that has not been eagerly sought 
after by the enemies of our common 

immortality, to help their godless theories; which are fully 
bent, if possible, on despoiling your 

spiritualism of her brightest ornament; which is proving the 
lofty and glorious truths of God's 

revelation, which proclaims with great power the deathless- 
ness of man. But we are glad to say that every science 

like an advancing tide, has thrown back upon them their 
own baseless thoughts; and rolled onward, bearing 

on its bosom, its mighty and resistless testimony of the truth 
of God, and the immortality of man. The last form 

of argument which has assailed the future existence of hu- 
manity, is the materialistic theory, or doctrine of 

homogeneousness. Its advocates have asserted that man has 
but one identical nature, that he is altogether earthly 

and earthborn, that his intelligent mind is nothing more than 
the delicate offspring of matter. Their 

favourite argument is, that the mind grows and dies with the 
body, that it is infantile with the infant 

body, and perfect in the adult ; and therefore it must perish 
with the body at death. Now if man be 

nothing more than simple matter, if the mighty spirit cor- 
respond exactly, in all cases to the size of 

the human body, then, there is a strong presumption that 
the dissolution of the physical organization 

is the utter extinction of the entire man ; but such conclu- 
sions are repugnant to reason and fact. It is 

readily granted that the soul manifests greater power, as the 
body ripens to maturity, and that when the 

body yields to the withering touch of time, the soul often 
seems to yield, too ; but this is not because it 

either grows or declines, but because the body as a habita- 
tion is too weak and frail for other than a 



68 KELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

limited and gradual development of its great powers. How 

often has some unexpected news, so excited 
the immortal spirit that its very emotional workings, have 

proved too powerful for its frail 
tenement, and the body has given way under the strain. It 

is the body therefore that is infantile and 
weak and not the soul. Such being the nature of the spirit 

in man, the death of the body can no 
more affect its existence, than the mere throwing off of a 

garment can annihilate the person of its 
wearer. Everlasting life pulsates in every faculty. There 

is, therefore, a spirit life. When the world's Creator 

breathed 
into man's nostrils the breath of life, He beheld in him the 

image of His own great self; He saw divinity assuming 
humanity, and humanity becoming immortal. In the eyes of 

God there are no dead; all who have been still are, their 
spirits have not been spent as a lightning flash, they are still 

living, loving, conscious, and still active. We would 
remind you of a verse from your hymn book, " Life is real, 

life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal. Dust thou 

art, to dust 
returnest was not spoken of the soul." The spirit's after- 
condition is a theme which touches you all; many who 

were dear 
to you have passed over, they have thrown off their mortal 

coil, and taken on the immortal, firmly trusting in God's 

love 
and mercy, and fondly hoping to behold his glory the very 

moment they put off the mortal. Are you to regard them 

as deaf, 
speechless, and blind? And will such be your destiny when 

you make the grand transition ? Is the power of hope to 

be blasted when 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 69 

in fullest bloom? Will the river of life be checked when its 

flow towards the eternal ocean is the greatest? Is it all a 

mockery, or a 
delusion? True it is that in the Bible, death is depicted 

under the beautiful and peaceful image of sleep; but 

such representation 
invariably, refers to the body, and not to the soul. The 

moment death's shadow falls upon the entrance of the 

gateway of life, 
and in the twinkling of an eye, the disembodied spirit is 

receiving the reward of its works, while in the body, just 

as the 
arctic sun dips into the ocean, it hastens again in its glorious 

career up the sky; so the instant the natural eye is 

eclipsed 
in death, the spiritual eye opens in eternity. One step and 

the soul is on the spirit-side of life. A troop of angelic 

beings 
unseen, crowd the chamber of death, and are ready with 

outstretched arms to welcome and bear the spirit to its 

home 
immediately on its emancipation. What a moment of 

wonders, one moment surrounded by weeping friends, 

and 
bleeding hearts, and taking the last fond embrace this side 

the grave, the next a companion of happy spirits, leaving 

their 
friends wondering why this should be. But here we would 

say, they know only in part, they see as through a glass 

darkly, the 
greatest efforts of your greatest men are as the opinions of 

children, and in the words of your Bible we say, "eye 

hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of 



TO RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

man the things which God hath prepared for them that 

love 
Him." Yet though the eye, and the ear and the mind of 

men, are inadequate to the giant task of grasping this, 

when Christian 
people say that they have communion with the saints, they 

gladly avow their firm belief, of being able to speak with 

their loved ones. 
No. Friends, death has not really separated us from you. 

Of course, as far as the mere physical relationship is con- 
cerned, it has; 
but there are spiritual, holy affinities which it cannot sever. 

The mortal flesh becomes pulseless clay, under its cold 

withering 
touch, the compound unity of man's disembodied person is 

dissolved by it, into the distinctive principles of flesh and 

spirit. 
Yet while the flesh perishes and becomes food for worms, the 

spirit lives on defying its power, and laughs at the cor- 
ruption 
of the grave. Therefore along with us, you can rejoice 

together and say in very truth, " grave, where is thy 

victory, 
death, where is thy sting? " For Friends, we tell you that 

neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor 

height, nor depth, 
nor anything else shall separate you from the love of God, 

and your loved ones. With what a lot of love, and kindly 

affection, 
you look forward to a reunion with your dear ones! their 

forms, faces, and smiles, are constantly floating before 

you; their 
voices sound sweetly on your ears, their well-remembered 



THE LAWS OF ETEKNAL LIFE 71 

names are as pouring oil on troubled waters. You love 

them still, 
you cannot forget your sainted dead. No, you have known 

them too well for that, you have wandered hand in hand 

with 
them, through the tangled woods of life; you have seen 

them 
wrestle and strive with circumstances in that life; and at 
last, you have seen them place their foot on the boundary 

land of another world; you have seen the heavens open, 

and the 
angels descending, and they have been bourne away from 

your sight. How, then, can you cease to remember them % 

But no 
sooner are they lost to your sight, than questions such as 

these come to you, shall we meet them, shall we love' 

and be 
loved by them again ? To answer these, we will turn first of 

all to the Bible for support. Turning to the second book 

of Kings, the 
sixth chapter, the sixteenth and seventeenth verses, you will 

find these words, " And he answered, Fear not, for they 

that be with us 
are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, 

and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. 

And the 
Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and 

behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of 

fire round 
about Elisha." Then, again, the eighth chapter of Ezekiel, 

third verse, there you will find how a spirit-hand lifted 

him up. Then 
again, Moses appeared in a visible form at the transfigura- 



72 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

tion of Jesus on Tabor, while his body was still lying in 

a valley 
in the land of Moab. Again, there is Samuel who hearing 

a voice, said " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." All 
these and many more we could mention give proof of a con- 
tinued existence. And here are a few thoughts from your 
modern great men on the same subject. "We think we 

have seen our loved one die, but if our eyes could be 

opened, if 
only for one moment we should see that life was uninter- 
rupted ; " 

this from one of the ministry of the Church of England. 
And now, Friends, we bring this little message to a close, 

but would like to remind you once again that you stand 

at the 
vestibule of an eternal world; so make the best use of your 

time here, sow to the spirit, place God first in all you 
do ; then, when you have finished your work in the body, you 

will be able to say with the apostle, " I have fought a 
good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, 

henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 



May the peace and joy which passeth all human understand- 
ing be yours. 
God bless you."— Easter Day, March 27, 1910. 

" The smallness of the copper-plate-like writing renders 
it impossible to be reproduced by any engraving; while at 
times with our greatly esteemed unpaid mediums, in various 
circles, the writing on our usual ^-plates is so microscopic, 
that, to enable us to read it, a high-power lens is necessary. 
And the character of the caligraphy in English, Archaic 
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, French, Arabic, varies con- 
tinually in our several, separate domestic, devotional and 
private gatherings, in places from twenty-four to seventy- 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 73 

seven miles apart, where we meet as directed (St. Matt. 
xviii. 20) in Faith and Love, knowing, from long experi- 
ence, the inscrutable power of Almighty God, " the God of 
the spirits of all flesh " (Numbers 16: 22 and 27: 16), who, 
thus, and in other ways, permits the Angel- World to be 
operative in this, and the Kingdom of Heaven to have rule 
abidingly with us here on earth." 

Ven. Archdeacon Collet. 
The psychograph (No. 41) is given in The Proofs, <&c, 
p. 209. 

Rev. Stainton Moses wrote in his Diary on 
Easter Day, 1875 : " I had been conscious of the 
presence of a great number of spirits in the morn- 
ing." After some reference to this, it was writ- 
ten under an entirely new influence, though by 
the usual amanuensis : 

" We have told you that we always celebrate 
anniversaries, and Easter is with us a festival as 
well as with you, though we celebrate it from 
other reasons and with a higher knowledge. 
Easter is to us the Festival of Resurrection, but 
not of the body. To us it symbolizes not Resur- 
rection of Matter, but Resurrection from matter, 
the Resurrection of Spirit; and not this alone, 
but Resurrection of Spirit from material beliefs 
and surroundings; the emancipation of the soul 
from the earthly and material, even as the spirit 



74 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

rises from the dead body with which it has done 
for ever. 

" You have learned that there is a spiritual 
significance in everything, even as there is a 
spirit underlying every material object. So the 
dogma that Christendom celebrated today is to us 
of special significance. Christians keep festival 
in memory of the rescue of their Master, the Lord 
Jesus, from the grasp of death ; and they errone- 
ously believe that the material body was revived, 
they do in ignorance celebrate the great spiritual 
truth that there is no death. The festival to us 
is one of joy over the partial recognition of a 
truth divinely seen by man; and of still greater 
rejoicing over the mighty work consummated on 
this day. It is not that death was vanquished, as 
you say, but that man began dimly to see a vision 
of eternal life , . .* 

" The life of the Christ, so far as it was public, 
was compressed within three years and a few 
months. For that, the previous thirty years had 
been a preparation. During all that time he was 
receiving instruction from those exalted angels 
who inspired him with zeal and love for his mis- 

i Spirit Teachings, p. 249, f . 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 75 

sion. He was a constant communer with the 
world of spirit; and was the more able to drink 
in their teachings that his body was no bar to his 
spirit." Um$^ 

Unless the story was of later origin, L e., after 
Our Lord had used the phrase " My Father " for 
God ; it may be suggested that it was due to spirit 
control, for it is very improbable that a child of 
twelve could have spontaneously expressed it. 

I have italicized a few words which are of great 
importance. We ordinarily believe that Christ 
returned from, exactly as he had entered, the 
tomb, excepting the grave-cloths. Yet we read 
of His entering a room with closed doors, and 
that He vanished in a moment. He tells us that 
He had received the power to lay down his life 
and to retake it, from the Father. We cannot 
yet explain how the change of " properties " of 
ordinary body can have come about ; but Modern 
Science has thrown some light upon it and Spir- 
itualism, a great deal more. Science says that 
everything is composed of infinitesimally small 
electrons. Hence we can conceive that the dif- 
ference between the terrestrial body and spiritual 
body may bem the different arrangement of our 



76 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

electrons, as between ice and vapour or steam. 
Spirits are invisible to us ; but our bodies appear 
invisible or " shadowy " to them ; while they are 
" solid " to each other. Now it may tentatively 
be suggested that Christ never parted with his 
terrestrial body, but changed it into his spiritual 
body. That when he appeared in the closed 
room He " demateriaiized " it i. e., changed the 
electrons from forming a spiritual into one re- 
sembling a material body, and vice versa. 

When Mahedi * was materialized through Dr. 
Monck, and further controlled by Samuel, who 
had been the Archdeacon Colley's former friend, 
he offered him a baked apple, just as our Lord ate 
broiled fish and honeycomb. But to his astonish- 
ment, he did not eject the skins, for they fell from 
the mouth of the medium, Dr. Monck! He kept 
them and I have seen them. 

Something of the above kind of change appar- 

i A materialized spirit who wrote his name " Mahedi," pro- 
duced in my The Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, under a 
second control, " Samuel," No. 38, who had been the Arch- 
deacon's great friend, as well as of F. WI. Monck. He always 
wrote his e's with the Greek form of the letter, as reappeared 
in his spirit-writing. 

The above account is given more in detail in The Proofs of 
the Truths of Spiritualism, p. 250, ff. 



THE LAWS OF ETERNAL LIFE 77 

ently took place, for, as Imperator says, Jesus 
did not reassume his old body, but He must have 
changed its character. 

When Mahedi sat at a table, the Archdeacon 
rested his arm on his shoulder to see what resist- 
ance was felt. The Archdeacon told me it was 
just like that of any ordinary man ; but, when he 
accidentally breathed on Mahedi's helmet, it ap- 
peared at once to begin to dissolve! (No. 51.) 



CHAPTER V 

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER PREACHED AND 
PRACTISED IN THE NEXT LIFE 

It has been asked: "What is the 'good* of Spiritual- 
ism?" — The answer is: By means of it we are assured 
of the most important fact it is possible to learn. — It is 
that our future happiness is proportional to our character 
acquired in this world. — As we have lived, so are we on 
awakening in Hades. — There are no external " punish- 
ments " or " rewards " awaiting us, but just the natural or 
inevitable results of our earthly life. — Moreover, we learn 
that it is more difficult to undo the effects of wrong beliefs 
and Christless conduct. — Imperator's Gospel is the same 
as that of Jesus Christ. — Illustration by Mr. Heslop. — 
To understand the Truth, we must depend upon Reason. — 
We must " express God in our earth-life." — Purity of mo- 
tive is everything. — Spirits return to earth to help. — The 
Heart as well as the Head is necessary. — The " Good Man " 
is the " philosopher and philanthropist in one." — All selfish- 
ness must be eradicated. — Christ is our Example. — An ex- 
hortation of Imperator to Rev. S. Moses. — A psychographic 
illustration of advice from St. Luke's Gospel. (Nos. 46, 
47.) — Spiritualism as a Religion. — The Golden Chain. — 
A Spiritual Catechism, essentially Christian. 

It is sometimes asked : " Even if it be true, of 
what use is Spiritualism? Is there any spiritual 
i Good ' derivable from it? " 

78 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 79 

The answer is so important that it is desirable 
to give sufficient illustrations of what the Spirits 
themselves tell us about Religion ; so that we may 
have a clear idea of what will be expected of us on 
the other side, and especially how we must live 
here; for the Spirits are unanimous in insisting 
upon the truth which our Lord emphasized : that 
we must prepare ourselves in this life for the 
next ; so that we may be already " at one " with 
Christ and God when we wake up on the other 
side. 

As we have lived, so shall we be ; there will be 
no external " punishments " or " rewards " im- 
mediately awaiting us but simply the natural re- 
sults or inevitable consequences of our manner 
of life on this earth. Such truly, but symboli- 
cally represent the meaning of the parable of the 
rich man and Lazarus. 

As regarding all who disbelieve in Spiritual- 
ism, and do not care to take the trouble to ascer- 
tain wherein lie the proofs of its many truths, 
and that it is possible to communicate with those 
who have gone before, it is hopeless to expect 
them to believe that we now know how Religion, 
or the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is regarded in the 



80 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Unseen World; or, in what way the future con- 
cerns us here; who must, in time, follow all who 
have gone before, e. g., Huxley is reported to have 
said : " Even if Spiritualism be true, it does not 
interest me." 

All who call themselves " Spiritualists " will 
perhaps appreciate any effort to put in a concise 
form what each should regard as his real object 
of life on earth; so that we should now try to 
avoid having to undo much of more or less mis- 
taken beliefs and a career in this world. More- 
over, I repeat, the Spirits tell us that it is more 
painful to undo a wrong belief after we have left 
this plane. 

In the first place we learn from the New Testa- 
ment that Christianity does not consist of Dog- 
mas, beyond the belief or conviction of the exist- 
ence of the Creator, who is a God of Love, or 
rather that " God is Love," and in all that Jesus 
Christ did to reveal by his own, the Character of 
the Father ; or what we must believe of God Him- 
self. Not only " He who hath seen Me hath seen 
the Father " ; but " Blessed are they who have 
not seen Me, and yet have believed," and have 
faith. 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 81 

Imperator says that we " progress on the other 
side by persistence through the instruction of 
higher intelligences, and by a gradual and labori- 
ous undoing of sin and sinful habits." 

A practical illustration corroborative of Im- 
perator's words will be found in Mr. Heslop's con- 
versations with his wife entitled: Speaking 
across the B order-Line. Mr. Heslop thus wrote 
by his wife's hand : " I have been away on a mis- 
sion to the ' Land of Darkness.' I had a sudden 
call to go there, to help one to whom I was ap- 
pointed a minister. 

" Your world is in darkness when compared 
with the Christ sphere, but it is brilliant when 
contrasted with these regions where I have just 
been. There are souls there filled with the tor- 
ture of remorse more bitter than anything you 
can conceive possible. Truly must they ' work 
out their own salvation with strong crying and 
many tears.' And we go to carry comfort to 
them. To speak of the love of the Divine Sav- 
iour, which alone can lead them out of darkness 
into His glorious light." * 

i Op. tit, p. 29. This is a hint that there was no " Atone- 
ment" upon which the sinner can rely. See the Appendix to 
Mr. Heslop's hook. 



82 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLI? 

Now to proceed in our enquiry upon Religion. 
— Imperator says very truly that "man must 
judge according to the light of Reason x that is 
in him. That is the ultimate standard, and the 
progressive soul will receive what the ignorant or 
prejudiced will reject. God's truth is forced on 
no man. He offers, and they who are prepared, 
receive the message. The ignorant and unfit re- 
ject it. 3 

" As the soul lives on this earth, so does it go to 
the Spirit-life. Its tastes, its predilections, its 
habits, its antipathies, they are all with it still. 
It is not changed, save in the accident of being 
freed from the body. . . . The soul's Char- 
acter has been a daily, hourly growth. It 
has been a weaving into the nature of the 
spirit that which becomes part of itself, 
identified with its nature, inseparable from 
its character. It is no more possible that 
that character should be undone, save by 
the slow process of obliteration, than that 

iSee I Thess., 5, 2, f. "Prove all things; hold fast that 
which is good " ; " being always ready to give answers to every 
man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in 
you." (7 Pet. 3, 15.) 

2 Op. cit., p. 11, ff. 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 83 

the woven fabric should be rudely cut and the 
threads remain intact." 

Mr. Heslop, as well as " Julia " and others, all 
speak of the same necessity of living the Christ- 
life here, to be sure of happiness hereafter; for 
such is " Religion/' or Christianity. 

"You hardly realize," writes Mr. Heslop, 
"that you have power (on earth) to ' express 
God ? in your lives. The acts and deeds which I 
had thought good, and of which I was rather 
proud, were not regarded here; but some little 
word or deed almost forgotten, stood out clear 
and distinct. It was the purity of motive that 
gave it value, nothing else. Remember that you 
are building your home in Paradise all the time 
you dwell on earth. It is the outer expression of 
your thought. All spiritual and beautiful 
thought produces beautiful surroundings ; so that 
as you walk about here, you can gauge the spir- 
itual quality of the inhabitant by the beauty of 
his dwelling. There are no mysteries in Para- 
dise, all is open, and every secret thought is 
known." 

The following extract confirms Imperator's as- 
sertion. 



84 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Spirits have sometimes said they like to come 
and communicate with ns; and the writer of 
Christ in You adds a remarkable sentence: 
" Since the mind is the seat of pain, do you not 
see that unless you have the mind of Christ, you 
cannot acquire it by freedom of the body of flesh 
only? It is more difficult to conquer on the plane 
of spirit; in fact you may long to come back! 
Just where you are is the place to learn ; there- 
fore, we who love you, come to help you at your 
present stage, not only for your own sake, but in 
order that the great Self, of which you are a part, 
may not be ignorantly hidden, 

"Begin by opposing sense suggestions. You 
are not born to suffer and decay, but are here for 
a purpose. There is a reason for your place in 
the great plan of life, and no one else can do your 
work. Reject the suggestion that your environ- 
ment makes triumph impossible. These very 
conditions can be made steps of ascent; you can 
begin now to readjust your life, . , . You will 
find that this is the very opportunity for the 
higher self to speak. Many join with us as you 
read these words in prayer and strong encourage- 
ment that you fail not. Begin, as we suggest, in 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 85 

the simplest way, to realize that it is God that 
worketh in you to will and to work for His good 
pleasure." * 

As a Heading to Section II, Rev. Stainton 
Moses writes : " Much was made of the heart as 
well as of the head and the orderly development 
of the whole powers of the body, intellect and 
affection were insisted upon. It was said that 
want of balance was a great cause of retrogres- 
sion, or of inability at any rate to progress. 

"I suggested," (Mr. Moses adds), "the phil- 
anthropist as the man who came nearest to the 
ideal. The reply was as follows : 

" The true philanthropist is he who grows lik- 
est God every hour. He is enlarging by constant 
exercise the sympathies which are external and 
undying, and in the perpetual exercise of which 
man finds increasing happiness. The philan- 
thropist and the philosopher, the man who loves 
mankind, and the man who loves knowledge for 
its own sake, these are God's jewels of priceless 
value, and of boundless promise. 

" The philosopher, hampered by no theories of 
what ought to be, bound by no subservience to 

i Christ in Ywi, pp. 130 ff. Cp. Phil, 2, 13. 



86 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

sectarian opinion, to the dogmas of a special 
school, free from prejudice, receptive of truth, 
whatever that truth may be, so it be proven — he 
seeks into the mysteries of Divine wisdom and 
searching, finds his happiness. He need have no 
fear of exhausting the treasures, they are with- 
out end. His joy throughout life shall be to 
gather ever richer stores of knowledge, truer 
ideas of God. 

" The union of these two — the philosopher 
and the philanthropist — makes the perfect man. 
Those who unite the two, progress further than 
spirits who progress alone." 

Just as St. James identified " Religion " with 
Character and Conduct, so Imperator thus de- 
picts the ideal character to be striven for in this 
life, to be acquired in full in the life to come. 

With regard to the preceding description, Mr. 
Stain ton Moses replied to Imperator: "But you 
have described a perfect character." He replied : 
" We must eradicate selfishness in all its many 
forms. There must be no obtruding of self, or 
we can do nothing. There is nothing so abso- 
lutely fatal to spirit influence as self-seeking, 
self-pleasing, boastfulness, arrogance or pride. 



THE GOSPEL OF CHAEACTER 87 

The intelligence must be subordinated or we can- 
not work upon it. If it be dogmatic, we cannot 
use it. If it be arrogant and selfish, we cannot 
come near it. Self-abnegation has been the vir- 
tue which has graced the wise and holy men of 
all time. The seers who bore of old the flag on 
which was inscribed for their generation the mes- 
sage of progressive truth were men who thought 
little of themselves, and much of their work. 
They who spoke to the Jews, whose messages you 
have in your sacred records, were men of self- 
denying purity and singleness of life. Jesus, 
when He lived amongst men, was a grand and 
magnificent instance of the highest self-abnega- 
tion and earnestness of purpose. He lived with 
you a life of pure self-denial and practical ear- 
nest work and He died a death of self-sacrifice for 
truth. In Him you have the purest picture that 
history records of man's possibilities. They who 
since have purged the world from error, and have 
shed on it the beams of truth, have been one and 
all men of self-denial and earnest devotion to a 
work which they knew to be that for which they 
were set apart. Socrates and Plato, John and 
Paul, the pioneers of truth, the heralds of prog- 



88 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ress, all have been unselfish souls, souls who knew 
nought of self-seeking, of proud aggrandizement, 
of boastful arrogance. To them earnestness and 
singleness of purpose, devotion to their ap- 
pointed work, forgetfulness of self and its inter- 
ests were given in a high degree. Without that 
they could not have effected what they did. Self- 
ishness would have eaten out the heart of their 
success. Humility, sincerity and earnestness 
bore them on. 

" This is the character we seek. Loving and 
earnest, self-denying and receptive of truth, with 
single eye to God's work, and with forgetfulness 
of earthly aims. Rare it is, rare as it is beauti- 
ful. Seek, Friend, the mind of the philosopher, 
calm, reliant, truthful and earnest; Seek the 
spirit of the philanthropist, loving, tolerant, 
ready to help, quick to give the needed aid. Add 
the self-abnegation of the servant of God who 
does his work and seeks for no reward. For such 
a character, work, high, holy, noble, is possible. 
Such we guard and watch with jealous care. On 
such the Angels of the Father smile and tend and 
protect them from injury." 

Imperator concludes the second section with 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 89 

this exhortation to the Rev. Stainton Moses: 
" Friend, when others seek from you as to the 
usefulness of our message, and the benefit which 
it can confer on those to whom the Father sends 
it, tell them that it is a Gospel which will reveal 
a God of tenderness and pity and love, instead 
of a fabled creation of harshness, cruelty and pas- 
sion. Tell them that it will lead them to know of 
Intelligences whose whole life is one of love and 
mercy and pity and helpful aid to man, com- 
bined with adoration of the Supreme. Tell them 
that it will lead man to see his own folly, to un- 
learn his fancied theories, to learn how to culti- 
vate his intelligence that it may progress, to use 
his opportunities that they may profit him, to 
serve his fellow-men, so that when they and he 
meet in the hereafter, they may not be able to re- 
proach him that he has been, so far as he could, 
a clog and an injury to them. Tell them that 
such is our glorious mission; and if they sneer, 
as the ignorant will, and boast of their fancied 
knowledge, turn to the progressive souls who will 
receive the teaching of wisdom; speak to them 
the message of Divine truth that shall regenerate 
and elevate the world; and for the blind ones 



90 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

pray that, when their eyes are opened, they may 
not despair at the sight which they shall see." 

As an instance of a Control appealing to Scrip- 
ture in order to tender advice to one on this side 
of the Border-line, I produced an interesting psy- 
chograph of a passage of St. Luke's Gospel. 

I have given a longer account of this remark- 
able psychograph in The Proofs of the Truths of 
Spiritualism , but will here state the chief facts. 
(No. 46.) 

A photograph of the Mother of one of the circle 
at Crewe (Mr. Hope being the medium) was 
promised by the Control, and in addition a mes- 
sage in Greek on another plate, the number 
(fifth) being selected by the Control ; who stated : 
" The passage will be found in the British Mus- 
eum under a glass shade. That is the only one 
in existence ; it was given by Cyril Lucar of Con- 
stantinople to Charles I." 

Before going to London I compared the psycho- 
graph with the specimens of ancient MSS. in 
Young's Concordance, and found that it agreed 
with the Alexandrine MS. I soon found the 
Codex Alexandrinus in the British Museum, but 
could not get near it, as it is railed round. The 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 91 

keeper of the MSS. Department possesses a pho- 
tographic facsimile ; so the Archdeacon was thus 
enabled to take a photograph from the original ; 
which I have produced. (No. 47.) 

A careful comparison of the two shows that the 
psychograph is not a photographic, but a writ- 
ten copy, as the lines are not strictly parallel nor 
the upstrokes vertical as in the original ; though 
the same words begin and end each line respec- 
tively. The reader can refer to Luke, 17, 5, if 
he wishes to read the passage in English. 1 

iThis text was chosen for a definite, kindly purpose. 



\ 



CHAPTER VI 

" JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, TODAY AND 
FOR EVER." — (HEB., 13, 8.) 

Imperator's description of Jesus Christ. — His mission is 
the same as Christ's. — " To preach Jesus Christ as our 
Great Example"; to bring about a "Unity" with Him; 
or ". Christ in you " as St. John defines it. — This is only 
to be secured by imitation of His Character and Conduct. — 
The Gospel of Humanity. — Rev. S. Moses tells Imperator 
that his teaching will not be accepted, because Imperator 
cancels the leading dogmas of the Church, represented by 
erroneous terms. — (Atonement, Substitution, Redemption, 
Propitiation of the Father, and Vicarious suffering.) — 
Religion to be true must be practical and not based on 
barren beliefs or dogmas. — The Spirit Creed. — The True 
Christ. — Rev. Stainton Moses* "Regeneration" through 
Imperator's teaching. 

" You enquire of us," (wrote Imperator) " what 
position we assign to Christ? " In reply he de- 
votes the eighteenth section of Spirit Teachings 
to this important matter. 

" It is our task to do for Christianity what 
Jesus did for Judaism. We would take the old 
forms and spiritualize their meaning and infuse 
into them new life. We do not abolish one jot 



JESUS CHRIST 93 

or one tittle of the teaching which the Christ gave 
to the world. We do but wipe away man's mate- 
rial glosses and show yon the hidden spiritual 
meaning which has been missed. 

" This was the mission of Christ. He claimed 
for Himself the l fulfilment ' 1 of the Law, not its 
abolition or abrogation, was His intent. He 
stripped off the rags of Pharisaical ritual, the 
glosses of Rabbinical speculation, and laid bare 
the divine truth that was beneath all the grand 
principles divinely inspired which man had well 
nigh buried. He was not only a religious but a 
social reformer; and the grand business of His 
life was to elevate the people, spirit and body ; to 
expose pretenders, and to strip off the mask of 
hypocrisy ; to take the foot of the despot from the 
neck of the struggling slave, and to make man 
free by virtue of that truth which He came from 
God to declare : ' Ye shall know the truth, and 
the truth shall make you free; and ye shall be 
free indeed.' " 2 

" He reasoned of life and death and eternity ; 

i This word in Greek really means the " filling full," that is, 
of spiritual meaning, wanting in the bare letter of the law. 

2 Op. cit.y p. 149 ; John, 8, 32. The words italicized are ap- 
plicable today, for the Allies were fighting for Christ. 



94 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

of the true nobility and dignity of man's natnre ; 
of the way to progressive knowledge of God. He 
came as the Great Fulfiller of the law; the man 
who showed as never man showed before the end 
for which the law was given — the Amelioration 
of Humanity. He taught men to look into the 
depths of their hearts, to test their lives, to try 
their motives, and to weigh all they did by the 
one ascertained balance — the fruits of life as 
the test of religion. 1 He told men to be humble, 
merciful, truthful, pure, self-denying, honest in 
heart and intent, and He set before them a living 
Example 2 of the life which he preached." 

This agrees with St. John, who wrote: 
" Whoso keepeth His Word, in him verily hath 
the love of God been perfected. Herein we know 
that we are in Him. He that abideth in Him 
ought himself also to walk even as He walked." 3 

i Cf. Jas., 1, 27. 

2/ Pet., 2, 21. To copy or imitate Him is described as hav- 
ing union with Him; so that Christ, really His Character, is 
said to be in us, and we in Him. (John, 17, 20 ff.; also / John, 
2, 6.) 

3 Dr. Westcott, writing on I John, 2, 6, says : " The sign of 
union with God is found in the Imitation of Christ. As the 
sign of knowledge is to be seen in the keeping of the divine 
commandments in their unity (v. 3) and in the keeping of the 
divine word in its verity (v. 5) ; so the sign of fellowship is to 



JESUS CHRIST 95 

So Imperator observes : " The Gospel of hu- 
manity * is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the 
only gospel that man needs ; the only one that can 
reach his wants and minister to his necessities. 

" We continue to preach that same evangel. 
By commission from the same God, by authority 
and inspiration from the same source, do we come 
now as apostles of this heaven-sent gospel. We 
declare truths the same as Jesus taught. We 
preach His Gospel, purified from the glosses and 
misinterpretations which man has gathered 
around it. We would spiritualize that which 
man has hidden under the heap of materialism. 

" We would bring forth the spirit truth from 
the grave, in which man has buried it ; and would 
tell to the listening souls of men that it lives still 
— the simple yet grand truth of man's pro- 
gressive destiny, of God's unceasing care, of 
Spirits' unslumbering watch over incarnated 
souls." 2 

Mr. Stainton Moses, in commenting on this 

be seen in the copying the divine life. (The Epistles of St. 
John, p. 50.) 

i Sir John Seeley in his work Ecce Homo adopts the phrase 
" Enthusiasm of Humanity " for " Love." 

2 Op. cit., p. 140 f . 



96 EELIGION OF THE SPIEIT WOELD 

teaching, said : " It will not be accepted " * ; for 
one class looks to the " Atonement " ; another to 
" Eitualism " ; but few to Character and Conduct 
as being the Essentials of Christianity. 

Mr. Moses prefaces the Eighth Section with 
some important information about himself: 
" From the standpoint that I then occupied it 
seemed to me that such teachings might be called 
by opponents atheistic or diabolic. I, at any 
rate, should call them Latitudinarian, and I 
maintained at some length a view more nearly 
approaching to orthodox teaching." 

He tells us that he was " trained in strict ac- 
cordance with Protestant Church principles, that 
he had accepted the tenets of that portion of the 
Church of England called 'Anglican/ or 
' sound High Churchman.' He subsequently 
tells us what was the effect, i. e., after some years, 
of Imperator's teaching upon himself. He wrote 
as follows : 

" From this time commenced that state of 
great spiritual exaltation, during which I was 
profoundly conscious of the presence and influ- 

iHe was right; for I published a book entitled: The Spir- 
itual Teaching of Christ's Life. 



JESUS CHRIST 97 

ence of one commanding Intelligence, and of an 
action on my mind which eventuated in a devel- 
opment of thought amounting to nothing short 
of spiritual regeneration." 

Imperator replied to Mr. Moses in the follow- 
ing words : " You have objected to our teachings 
that they are not consistent with the received 
creed of orthodoxy and Religion. The Spirits' 
healthful life has two aspects — the one pointing 
to God, the other to man. What says the spirit- 
creed of God? 

" In place of an angry, jealous tyrant, it re- 
veals a loving Father, who is not loving in name 
only, but in very deed and in truth; into whose 
dealings nought but love can enter, Who is just 
and good and full of affection to the lowest of 
His creatures. 

(( It does not recognize any need of propitiation 
towards this God. It rejects as false any notice 
of this Divine Being vindictively punishing a 
transgressor, or requiring a vicarious sacrifice 
for sin." 1 Dr. Westcott shows that " our propi- 

1 1 shall consider in a later chapter (No. 11) the true mean- 
ing of "Atonement," and the false ideas which have been at- 
tributed to this word. 



98 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

tiation " meant Christ would " propitiate " the 
sinner, by offering him His Flesh and Blood. 

Imperator thus teaches that the only true Re- 
ligion is one of a practical character and without 
dogmas. 1 

On the continuance of life Imperator says: 
" This mortal existence is but a fragment of life. 
Its deeds and their results remain when the body 
is dead. The ramifications of wilful sin have to 
be followed out, and its results remedied in sor- 
row and shame. For there is no vicarious ' Sub- 
stitution/ 

" The consequences of deeds of good are simi- 
larly permanent, and precede the pure soul and 
draw around it influences which welcome and aid 
it in the spheres. 

" Life we teach you, is one and indivisible ; one 
in its progressive development; and one in the 
effect on all alike of the eternal and immutable 
laws by which it is regulated. None are excused 
as favourites; none are punished mercilessly for 
error, which they were unable to avoid. Eternal 
justice is the correlative of eternal love. ' We 
preach the religion of work, of prayer, of adora- 

i So also says St. James. Jos., 1, 27. 



JESUS CHRIST 99 

tion. We tell you of your duty to God, to your 

brother and to yourself — soul and body alike.' " 

The following is Imperator's Spirit-Creed: 

DUTY TO GOD 

Honour and love your Father, God (Worship) . 
DUTY TO NEIGHBOUR 

Help your brother onward in the path of prog- 
ress (Brotherly Love). 

DUTY TO SELF 

Tend and guard your own body (Bodily cul- 
ture). 

Cultivate every means of extending knowledge 
(Mental progress). 

Seek for fuller views of progressive truth 
(Spiritual growth). 

Do ever the right and good in accordance with 
your knowledge (Integrity). 

Cultivate communion with the Spiritland by 
prayer and frequent intercourse (Spiritual nur- 
ture) . 

Within these rules are roughly indicated most 
that concerns you here. Yield no obedience to 



100 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

any sectarian dogmas. Give no blind adherence 
to any teaching that is not commended by Rea- 
son." 

In Section IX Mr. Stainton Moses again raised 
objections against Imperator's " unorthodox 
views." 

Imperator replies : " No donbt it seems to the 
unprepared spirit to be new and destructive of 
older forms of faith. But it is not so. It would 
be commendable to all who are not hampered by 
old prejudices. We said that we must clear 
away much rubbish ; that the work of destruction 
must precede the work of construction; that the 
old and unserviceable must first give place ; that 
in short we must clear before we build." 

" Yes," replies Mr. Moses, " but that ' rubbish ' 
is precisely what Christians have agreed in all 
ages to consider cardinal doctrines of the faith." 

" No, friend," replies Imperator, " not quite so. 
If you will read the records which so imperfectly 
record the earth-life of Jesus, you will not find 
that He claimed for Himself any such position as 
the Christian Church has since forced upon Him. 
He was what we preach Him, not such as the 
Church has made Him." 



JESUS CHRIST 101 

Then followed a crucial question by Mr. Moses : 
" I cannot think so. And the Atonement : What 
do you make of that? Your teaching is pure and 
beautiful, but surely it is not Christian? Nor is 
it the teaching which one who uses the sign of the 
Cross would reasonably be expected to promul- 
gate. So it seems to me." 

Imperator replies : " It shall be given in due 
course, cease now." After four days it came and 
occupied ten pages of the book. It concludes 
with the words : " We would have you know that 
the spiritual ideal of Jesus, the Christ, is no more 
like the human notion, with its accessories of 
atonement and redemption, as men have grasped 
them, than was the calf ignorantly carved by the 
ancient Hebrews like the God who strove to re- 
veal Himself to them ... we would tell you of 
the true significance of the life of the Christy and 
show you, as we can, how low and mean are the 
views of Him which we are striving to do away 
with. 

" You ask how the sign of the Cross can be pre- 
fixed to such teaching. Friend, the spiritual 
truth of which that sign is typical is the very 
cardinal truth, which it is our special mission to 



102 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

declare. The self-denying love which would ben- 
efit humanity even at the sacrifice of life and 
home and earthly happiness — the pure spirit of 
the Christ, this is what we would declare to you 
as the Godlike Spirit. This is the true salvation 
from meanness and self-aggrandizement, and 
self-pleasing and luxurious sloth, which can re- 
deem humanity, and make of men the children of 
God. This self-abnegation and incarnate love is 
that which can < atone ' for sin, and make man 
like God. This is the true ' atonement.' Not, 
indeed, a reconciliation of sin-stained humanity 
to an angry and holy God, purchased by the sac- 
rifice of His sinless Son; but a higher and truer 
atonement [at-one-ment] in the ennobling of the 
nature, the purifying of the spirit ; the making of 
the human and divine ONE in aim and purpose 
— the drawing of man's spirit even whilst in- 
earned, up nearer and nearer to the Divine. 

" This was the mission of Christ ; in this He 
was a manifestation of God ; the Son of God ; the 
Saviour of man ; the Reconciler ; the ' Atoner ' 
[i.e., putting man and God c at one']. And 
herein we perpetuate His work, we carry on His 
mission, we work under His Symbol, we fight 



JESUS CHRIST 103 

against the enemies of His Faith, against all who 
ignorantly, or wilfully dishonour Him, even 
though it be under the banner of orthodoxy and 
under the protection of His Name. 

" The days shall come when men shall recog- 
nize the Oneness of Christ's teaching on earth 
with ours ; and the human garb, gross and mate- 
rial, in which it has been shrouded, shall be rent 
asunder, and men shall see the true grandeur of 
the life and teaching of Him whom they ignor- 
antly worship. In those days they shall worship 
with no less reality, but with a more perfect 
knowledge; and they shall know that the sign 
( Hh ) under which we speak is the symbol of pur- 
ity and self-sacrificing love to them and to their 
brethren for all time. This end it is our earnest 
endeavour to attain. Judge of our mission by 
this standard, and it is of God, godlike ; noble as 
He is noble ; pure as He is pure ; truth-giving as 
He is true; elevating and saving, and purifying 
the spirit from the grossness of earthly concep- 
tions and raising it to the very atmosphere 
and neighbourhood of the spiritual and the di- 
vine." 

In another chapter I will endeavour to prove, 



104 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

from a study of the Greek text, that Imperator 
is certainly right; and our interpretations have 
gone astray, by translating the Vulgate or Latin 
version, instead of the original Greek text, to 
make our English Bible, in the sixteenth cen- 
tury. 

The great war has brought to the front the 
true Spirit of Christ; first as the uniter of man- 
kind, within the bounds of our own " Units " of 
the Army, and has found expression in the words, 
" Comrades of the War " ; but all the men of all 
the different nations fighting with us are now 
united in the common purpose of fighting for 
Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of Righteousness. 
We are all " at One " with that object. 

Imperator says : " The days shall come when 
men shall recognize the Oneness of Christ's teach- 
ing on earth with ours . . . men shall see the 
true grandeur of the life and teaching of Him 
whom they ignorantly worship. In those days 
they shall worship with no less reality but with a 
more perfect knowledge ; they shall know that the 
sign (Hh) under which we speak is the symbol of 
purity and self-sacrificing love to them and to 
their brethren for all time," 



JESUS CHRIST 105 

Are not the following instances illustrations of 
a fulfilment of Imperator's words? 

A certain incumbent had some wounded Indi- 
ans located in his parish. One died, and the 
question was raised : Where should he be buried? 
It was suggested to the Vicar that it should be 
in unconsecrated ground. He took the opposite 
view and buried the man in the consecrated 
church yard, adding a stone with the inscription 
as a heading: There is One God and Father of 
AIL v.j v— ; . 'jj^ii^ 

The native Indian officer thanked him and 
said : " Those beautiful words will do more to 
unite us Mohammedans with you than all the po- 
litical bonds could effect." The officer brought 
all his men on a little pilgrimage to the grave of 
their comrade before leaving; and they all ex- 
pressed their grateful thanks to the incumbent of 
the parish. 

" One touch of Nature — for Love is a human 
instinct — makes the whole world kin." 

The following well illustrates the spontaneous 
awakening of the truly natural Christian spirit 
of Agape. 

On November 20th ? 1917, came a letter from 



106 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

some disabled Japanese soldiers : " To the Hon- 
ourable and Brave." It was written by Surgeon, 
Colonel Ikutaro Goto, on behalf of 248 dis- 
abled Japanese soldiers. After expressing their 
" heart-felt sympathy," he proceeds to say : " You 
have bravely fought in the cause of humanity. 
In sending you a letter of our deep sympathy and 
love . . . humanity is one and the same every- 
where throughout the whole world. It knows 
neither national harriers nor racial distinctions. 
Our heart is yours; your heart is ours. So I beg 
you to kindly accept our profoundest sympathy. 
. . . The glory of the final victory is always with 
the side of the righteous and is waiting your 
brave and patriotic comrades now at the front. 
May Heaven bless all our allied peoples." 

This letter is an expression of pure Christian- 
ity, whatever the professed " religion " of the 248 
Japanese soldiers may be. The reader will at 
once recognize the " Christian expressions," 
which I have italicized. 



CHAPTER VII 

IMPERATOR AND HIS RELIGIOUS POSITION ; WHAT IS 
TRUE CHRISTIANITY? 

Imperator's religious position, based on Love. — He ap- 
peals to Reason. — Love replaces Beliefs. — Religion based 
on ecclesiastical terms, requires restatement. — The Christ- 
like Character and Conduct only essential. — The Imitation 
of the simplicity and sincerity of Jesus' teaching. — " Will 
this teaching be accepted?" asked Rev. S. Moses. — The 
present writer's experiences. — Imperator dismisses theo- 
logical Creeds as being unnecessary to make a Christian. — 
Restatements required. — Imperator's reply to Rev. Stain- 
ton Moses. — The Judgment Day. — Results depend upon 
our acquired characters in this world. — Mr. Heslop on the 
" Germ of Truth " being only taught on earth. — Purity of 
motive the determining value. — Rev. Stainton Moses' own 
" regeneration " through Imperator's influence. — The char- 
acter of this great spirit's teaching. — The Duty of the 
Church. — The present craving for Unity in the Churches 
and the Bishop of the Philippines' discourse. 

This great control of the Rev. Stainton Moses 
again emphasizes his position, as Expounder of 
the Religion held on the other side : " If you will 
further recollect the standpoint we have selected, 
you will see that in place of blind faith [or rather 
( Belief] which accepts traditional teaching — 

107 



108 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the old merely because it is old — we appeal to 
Reason; and in place of credulity we demand ra- 
tional, intelligent investigation and acceptance 
grounded on conviction." 

Such is the only true and scientific, i. e., ra- 
tional, way to discover the truth. It is not any 
" advancement " of the Truth that is required 
now ; for it is exactly what Jesus Christ and His 
Apostles taught. Such alone is really and truly 
everlasting. It is the false theology of later days 
which has disturbed it and coined a number of 
theological terms which " fixed " the erroneous 
conceptions involved. 

What the Church now requires — and that ur- 
gently — is to go back, restudy and restate the 
exact teaching of Christ. This can only be done 
by restoring the true meanings of the Greek in 
our New Testament, and eliminating every er- 
roneous word and misleading idea, and wrong 
term in our English Bible, and so recover the 
exact meaning of our Lord's words. In that way 
we shall discover that He was solely concerned 
with Character and Conduct, for it is these which 
constitute Salvation, i. e., Spiritual Health and 
Eternal Life, 



IMPERATOR 109 

Imperator well says : " Had men devoted their 
energies to the imitation of the simplicity and 
sincerity, the loving toil and earnest purpose, the 
self-sacrifice and purity of thought and life, 
which elevates and distinguishes the Christ, they 
would have wrangled less of His nature and have 
wasted fewer words upon useless metaphysical 
sophistries. Those of your theologians who 
dwelt in the days of darkness, and who have left 
to you an accursed heritage in their idle and 
foolish speculations, would have turned their 
minds into a more useful channel, and have been 
a blessing instead of a curse to mankind." 

Again the Rev. Stainton Moses replied to all 
Imperator's expositions by saying : " It will not 
be accepted." The present writer can corrobo- 
rate this as far as the past is concerned, but trust 
me not in the future. I had no theological train- 
ing, as Mr. Moses tells us that he had, when I was 
ordained in 1858. I had to find out for myself 
what theology meant ; as I was taught nothing at 
Cambridge. I began as a Curate, to read Rob- 
ertson's, Kingsley's, and Harvey Goodwin's ser- 
mons ; as I used to hear the last preacher in his 
own Church in Cambridge. They seemed to me 



110 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

to lead one into the right path, and my first real- 
ization was that " Charity/' now called Love 
(R.V.), was the corner-stone of Christianity. 
On that rock I built my Creed. 

Finding out that doctrinal terms did not al- 
ways correspond in meaning with the original 
Greek text, I wrote a book called The Vulgate the 
Source of False Doctrines. My object was to 
show that since the English New Testament was 
not translated from the original Greek, but from 
the Latin Vulgate, many English words have 
given wrong meanings, because they were 
founded upon the latter. 

In all, my object was to uphold Christ as our 
Great Example, as St. Peter calls Him. For, if 
we wish to be " perfect as our Heavenly Father is 
perfect," we must live the Christ-life, for that is 
being a Christian, or to be Christ-like. St. 
James describes or defines " Pure Religion " as 
being nothing else than purity in oneself and self- 
sacrificing love towards others in affliction. 1 

With regard to ecclesiastical dogmas and 
creeds, Imperator writes as follows : " When we 
deal with special forms of theological creed, we 

i Jos., 1, 27. 



IMPERATOR 111 

strive, in so far as we can, to spiritualize previ- 
ous opinion, rather than to eradicate it. We 
know — as you cannot know — of how trifling 
moment are forms of faith, provided the faith be 
alive and spiritual; and we strive, therefore, to 
build on the foundations already laid. To this 
end, however, whilst the broad outlines, which 
are themselves partially truthful, or which em- 
body as much truth as the intelligence can grasp, 
are preserved, much that is false and delusive 
must be cleared away. So the work of destruc- 
tion precedes the work of construction. The soil 
is purged of gross error, and the truth is refined 
and purified as far as may be. Hence it is that 
we do usually teach a modification of the views of 
truth held by those to whom we speak." 

I shall have occasion to give Imperator's view 
of the Atonement later on. Elsewhere Impera- 
tor makes this remark on Dogmas : " The bur- 
dens that a dogmatic priesthood has bound upon 
men's backs, we fling them to the winds ; the dog- 
mas which have hampered the soul, and dragged 
down its aspirations, we tear them asunder, and 
bid the soul go free. Our mission is the continu- 
ation of that old teaching which man has so 



112 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

strangely altered ; its source identical ; its course, 
parallel ; its end the same." 

The final test of a religious life, according to 
Imperator — and he only sums up Our Lord's 
teaching — will be best illustrated by Christ's 
parable of the Judgment ; * wherein He shows 
the fact that Character and Conduct, i. e., the 
" Word " He preached are the " Judge and 
Jury " ; in other words our own Conscience. 

Whatever value dogmas may have, we shall 
clearly not be judged by Head-beliefs; but by 
what may be called Heart-practice; i. e. } effected 
by the enthusiasm of Love. 2 

The following examples perhaps will explain 
the cause of the feeble reception of the above- 
named books. A Canon said in a sermon I heard, 
after reading my book on the Vulgate : " If I 
did not believe in ' Substitution,' s I would never 
enter this [his own] pulpit again." 

i Matt., 25, 31-46. 

2 1 Cor., 13. 

a This is a synonym for " Atonement " ; which regards 
Christ's death as a vicarious substitution, instead of man, to 
appease the wrath of God and satisfy His justice. It is forgot- 
ten that " God was in Christ, reconciling {i. e., at-one-ing) the 
world unto Himself and not reckoning their trespasses unto 
them" {Rom., 5, 19). 



IMPERATOR 113 

A clergyman wrote to a magazine (in which I 
had written an article showing the origin of the 
mistaken sense of " Atonement") and he said: 
" I know some think so, but I am too old to 
change my view ; and I represent a large number 
of the clergy." As if age could be any excuse for 
clinging to what is false ! 

Agreeing with Imperator, all other spirits who 
speak of religion at all are unanimous in saying 
rites, ceremonies, dogmas and doctrines or theol- 
ogy in general — as w T e understand them on earth 
— are unknown on the other side ; for Religion is 
wholly centred in Love and loving actions. Thus 
Mr. Heslop writes to his wife : 

" I see now that only the germ of truth is 
taught on earth, overladen by much error and 
superstition. You hardly realize that you have 
power to express God in your lives. The acts 
and deeds which I have thought good, and of 
which I was rather proud, were not regarded 
here ; but some little word or deed, almost forgot- 
ten, shows out clear and distinct. It was the 
purity of motive that gave it value, nothing else." 

So too, our Lord said : " The good man out of 
his good treasure bringeth forth good things." 



114 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Mr. Stainton Moses, at first, as we have seen, 
again and again, objected to Imperator's exposi- 
tion, recognizing, however, that " it was pure and 
beautiful, but surely," he asks, " it is not Chris- 
tian? . . . Nor is it the teaching which one who 
uses the sign of the Cross would reasonably be ex- 
pected to promulgate." ..." I was not con- 
tent,'' he wrote, " and took time to consider 
what had been written. ... It had a tendency 
to take the backbone out of faith," i. e., of course, 
belief, from his dogmatic point of view. 

Nevertheless, the time came when he saw, not 
only the beauty, but the truth, of Imperator's 
teaching ; and when reviewing the past he tells us 
in the Introduction that : " It was a period of 
Education, in which I underwent a spiritual de- 
velopment that was in its outcome a very regen- 
eration. I cannot hope, I do not try, to convey 
to others what I then experienced. But it may 
possibly be borne in upon the minds of some, who 
are not ignorant of the dispensation of the Spirit 
in their own inner selves, that for me the question 
of the beneficent action of external Spirit on my 
own self was thus finally settled. I have never 
since, even in the vagaries of an extremely seep- 



IMPERATOE 115 

tical mind, and amid much cause for questioning, 
ever seriously entertained a doubt." 

Of the communications he concludes : " It is 
their intrinsic claim, the end disclosed, the in- 
herent and essential truth that they contain, 
which marks their value. To many they will be 
utterly valueless ; because their truth is not truth 
to them. To others they will be merely curious. 
To some they will be an idle tale. I do not pub- 
lish them in any expectation of general accept- 
ance. I shall be quite content that they be at the 
service of any who can find them helpful." 1 

Mr. Myers writes at some length upon the 
value of the evidence of the automatic handwrit- 
ing of Mr. Moses, under seven separate head- 
ings ; 2 but he omits what, to the present writer, 
seems the most convincing of all, namely, the 
character of the religious teaching of Imperator; 
which was so greatly at variance with Mr. Moses' 
beliefs in which he had been brought up. Never- 
theless, he was completely converted or " regen- 
erated," as he himself says ; as stated above. 

1 Op. cit., Introduction, p. 7, f . The Communications were 
made during the years 1873-1877. 

2 Human Personality y p. 325. 



116 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

No better, no stronger proof of Imperator's 
existence could well be demanded. But — will 
the Churches ever side with Imperatorf The fol- 
lowing quotation is somewhat appropriate here, 
as it deals with Spiritual Unity based on com- 
mon Fellowship. 

The Bishop of the Philippines, in his inspir- 
ing sermon preached at St. Paul's on April 20th, 
1917, on the occasion of the entry of the United 
States into the war on behalf of Freedom, Hu- 
manity and Peace, dealt in his peroration with 
the duty of Christian Churches to assist the pro- 
motion of universal peace by promoting ecclesi- 
astical unity. 

What the Bishop said is not new, but spoken 
on a historic occasion, it should come home with 
peculiar force to the Christian leaders in the 
country : 

" Once more and finally ; the Soul of democ- 
racy is — I will not say religion — but organized 
religion. The day is passed for individualistic 
attempts to redeem mankind by visions that are 
not tuned to the infinite, the eternal and the uni- 
versal. Only this morning I received a letter 
from a layman in America, a man who has done 



IMPERATOR 117 

more for the unity of the Church of Christ than 
any other man of his generation, and this is what 
he says : ' It is, I think, becoming increasingly 
clear, that the question of world peace and of 
Christian reunion go together, for only the vis- 
ible unity of the Church of Christ will be compe- 
tent to remove the obstacles in the way of the es- 
tablishment of His Kingdom of peace and right- 
eousness and love.' It is true. It is true. The 
world is craving for the unity that comes from 
God, and that is maintained by the operation of 
the Spirit of God. That unity is going to come 
just as fast as we will let God bring it to us ; the 
only obstacle is our stubbornness, our obstinacy. 
There is — and here is the root of the matter — 
a Prussianism in the Churches today. The su- 
preme unit of the Churches is the Church. The 
watchword of the Churches must be Unity. 
Either Churches must justify their claims to be 
the favoured or exclusive residence of God by 
exhibiting in their works a holiness or a superi- 
ority nowhere now apparent, or else they must 
admit the favours of God towards other Churches 
of lesser pretentions. A large part of the public 
has already served notice on the Churches that, 



118 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

unless we observe the elementary principles of 
peaceableness and fairness and fellowship, they 
will get on without us. God defend us from the 
day when the sheep of Christ's flock turn upon 
the shepherds because of the shepherds' littleness 
and inability to be true leaders. But I see a 
vision, I see a great movement, a movement not 
of men, but of God, coming sweeping through 
this world of ours and gathering into its embrace 
all right-minded, all true-hearted men. I see a 
united Church, a Church worthy of the residence 
of Jesus Christ among men, the shrine and in- 
strument of His Spirit, a Church which will 
bring holiness and power to all the people of God 
— that is the end of the vision, and that is the su- 
preme thing to which we must commit ourselves 
today." 

I had been reading this aloud ; and the Spirits, 
who are always present with us, said : " Tell the 
Little Man that is exactly what we are all taught 
here." 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ACQUISITION OF THE CHRIST-LIKE CHARACTER 
AND CONDUCT IS EVERYTHING HEREAFTER; 
AND MUST BE STRIVEN FOR ON EARTH 

Our characters can be seen and our thoughts be visible to 
all spirits, as the writer to the Hebrews asserts. — This leads 
to the Fellowship of the " like." An illustration of a spirit 
witnessing one's acts and words and reporting them. Their 
seeing and hearing require a medium. — Progress in spiritu- 
ality, our right object on earth and hereafter. — Example: 
" We are certain you will win the war ; but what is of more 
importance is to be ready to die for God." — Julia's con- 
tribution to the subject. — Real Religion. — St. Paul's cor- 
roboration of the reiterated assertion that Love (Agape) 
is of the first and vital importance in a Christian. — Con- 
science will be our Judge. — Each should find time to think 
of God. — Im r perator > s final prayer. 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12, 1) 
uses the expression : " Seeing we are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us 
lay aside the sin which doth so easily beset us." 

Who are these witnesses? Certainly not as a 
rule human beings on earth; for the sinner who 
had a " secret sin " is not likely to seek publicity, 
but avoids it ; but he cannot avoid it in the spirit 

119 



120 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

world, for we now know that we are, here on 
earth, with at least one or more friendly, helping 
spirits, but others are always about ; who, if they 
cannot see or hear well without a medium, they 
assure us that they can read our thoughts; and 
they can do both if a medium happens to be pres- 
ent. Thus, those who attended my lectures dis- 
covered a medium who was one of three people 
who were the only ones present at the time ; 1 so 
that in any larger group of men and women there 
would probably be one or more with mediumistic 
powers, though without being aware of it them- 
selves. 

This reading of each other's thoughts leads to 
close fellowship among all who are like-minded 
on the other side ; as is pre-figured in the parable 
of the rich man and Lazarus. 

The following incident will illustrate the possi- 
bility of hearing what you are talking about in 
private and then the spirit subsequently repeat- 
ing it through a medium. 

On January 15th, 1917, I went to the Bank to 
invest in the " War Loan " for a friend. I subse- 
quently asked the Manager as to the advisability 

i The Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, pp. 35 ff. 



THE CHRIST-LIKE CHARACTER 121 

of selling out some long-standing stock for the 
same purpose. As I expected, he advised me not 
to do so. When I returned home, our medium 
said : " The spirits tell me you have been con- 
sulting the Manager about investing yourself in 
the Loan ! " 

I had not mentioned that I had any intention 
of doing so; indeed, I only thought of it just as I 
was going to the Bank, so I asked the spirits how 
they came to know. The reply was : " We were 
there." So they could hear what the conversa- 
tion was about. In this case no one else beside 
the Manager and myself were present ; so one of 
us two was presumably sufficiently mediumistic 
to carry the words to their auditory organs, what- 
ever they may be in a spirit-body. I am not 
aware of having any such power; for I tried an 
experiment. I told our music-loving spirit- 
friends that the lady would go out of the room 
while I played a piece of music; when she re- 
turned, I asked if they could hear it. The reply 
was to the effect that it was " next to impossible ; 
what they did hear was not worth listening 
to." 

This will be sufficient to warn my readers of 



122 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the truth of the words of the writer to the He- 
brews. 

As we have trials on this earth and must bear 
them in order to progress in spirituality; and 
since, when we pass over, we continue the same 
life that we had here, so must we continue to 
grow in grace there, as our domestic spirits tell 
us. The following observation came from them 
quite unexpectedly, and it has been often re- 
peated by others in other words. 

I happened to be reading aloud about the War : 
" We know you will win ; but what is of much 
more importance is being ready to die for God. 
We have great trials here to surmount, before we 
attain to the little joy we possess." 

On hearing this I remarked aloud : " I quite 
understand; since we all pass over very imper- 
fect, our trials will probably continue to disci- 
pline us and so enable us to go on improving." 

The comment followed : " The Little Man does 
not seem to be surprised ; but it is quite true." 

Julia also writes on character, which is the es- 
sence of the Christian Religion here and here- 
after. 

" The worth of character must be seen as we 



THE CHRIST-LIKE CHARACTER 123 

see it here to be appreciated. We see men as 
they are ... we see the nature of the soul, and 
the factor that decides is the character. . . . You 
can hardly, by any stretch of imagination, realize 
what a change it is to live in a place where the 
only test is character; where property, station 
and work do not count — no, nor religious pro- 
fessions. 

"We see things as they are, not as they are 
labelled. We have such surprises to encounter ; 
such amazing upturns and revolutions of the es- 
timate in which men and women are held. . . . 
Judge not until at least you see the man as he is. 

" We don't ask what Church. We never ask 
about these things except so far as they stand in 
the way of the real religion. We lament and 
have continually to deplore the fact that men 
have substituted (church connections) for the 
love which is the fulfilling of the law. The de- 
gree of love with which any one loves measures 
his religion." 

If the reader will study St. Paul's chapter on 
Love ; by which he means " the enthusiasm of hu- 
manity," and then St. James' definition of Chris- 
tianity, he will see at once that Julia is simply 



124 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

telling us that the Christian Religion, in the only 
true sense of the word, is the same here and here- 
after, namely, the Christ-like Character and Con- 
duct. 

With these two references let him compare Our 
Lord's description of the result of the Judgment 
Day, which is in reality — and not parabolically 
expressed — the Day we pass over to the other 
side; when our Conscience will stare us in the 
face and pronounce the sentence we deserve. 

If the preceding words be true, then Julia's 
warning is appropriate : " You must have time 
to think of God and of His manifestation of 
Love, otherwise you will crowd God out of your 
life ; and life without Love is a life without God. 
What chance have you of realizing the truths of 
the Other World if you are perpetually racing to 
catch trains in this? I know you must catch 
trains, but what I plead for is, that you should 
make time, at least for a few minutes a day, in 
which to catch Eternity, or a glimpse of it and of 
eternal things." 

IMPERATOR'S Final Prayer. 

The Evangelists have recorded "The Lord's 



THE CHRIST-LIKE CHARACTER 125 

Prayer." St. John has given us Our Lord's last 
prayer before finally quitting this world in the 
body. I here give Imperator's prayer at the con- 
clusion of his arguments upon Religion on the 
other side. 

"Father! Eternal, Infinite, All-wise. We 
draw near to Thee, and lay before Thee our peti- 
tions, knowing that Thou dost hear us and wilt 
answer our prayers. Eternal God, remove from 
our path the bars and clogs that hinder and ham- 
per us. Loving Father, shed into the doubting 
heart a beam of light to illumine the dark corners 
and to drive out the lurking foe. Mighty Mas- 
ter, bear down to us that consolation which we 
need in our labour. Great the labour, great must 
be the love. Great is the work, great must be the 
power. Grant it, Almighty Power! and to Thee 
will we render our praises. Before Thee we will 
testify of our grateful adoration, and to Thee will 
we bring the free will offering of our loving hom- 
age. Glory and blessing and honour and praise 
be to Thee from Angel and Spirit, throughout 
Thy Universe ! " 

* IMPERATOR. 1 

i Spirit Teachings, p. 176. 



CHAPTER IX 

AGAPE, THE TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE, I. E., THE EN- 
THUSIASM OF HUMANITY (SEELEY), IS THE 
GREATEST FEATURE OF THE NEXT WORLD 

Mr. Heslop's conversion from anti-spiritualism, and both 
his and Mr. Stainton Moses', to the spirit-teaching of Chris- 
tianity. — The Communion of Saints and consolation. — 
Julia, now indifferent to earthly " religious beliefs," as all 
the separate dogmatic teachings are replaced by Love, i. e., 
the basis of the true Christian character. — Time required 
to abandon erroneous beliefs, and their non-existence on 
the other side. — Consolation of affection. — The abolition 
of Creeds. — Julia's Bureau and its use. — Explanation of 
Love as being " Christ in You." — Married people and their 
love on the other side. — The Author of Christ in You on 
the Communion of Saints. — Private Dowding on Love. — 
Clement of Alexandria. — Mr. Heslop corroborates others. — 
Imperator's exposition of Love. — An Indian Yogi on Love. 
— Imperator's Summary. — Mistaken view of a Roman 
Catholic Spirit that I "should do more for the Virgin 
Mary." — The parallel in the Middle Ages (12th century) 
of the supplanting Christ by St. Edmund, at the Abbey, 
Bury St. Edmunds. — Love and Salvation. — The "Little 
Angel Adjutant " of the Salvation Army. — Imperator's 
comment. — The unpardonable sin, and why it is so. 

Mrs. Heslop thus writes of her departed hus- 
band : " It was well known that John, in his 

126 



AGAPE, TKUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 127 

earth-life, was intolerant of all idea of spirit- 
communication. He could not even endure the 
subject spoken of before him. It was, therefore, 
rather perplexing to his friends when I said that 
he had come into communication with me again 
after his physical death. Overhearing * a discus- 
sion on the point, he wrote as follows : ' Our 
friend is quite right in thinking that when on 
earth I bitterly opposed all suggestions of spirit- 
communion. I thought there was blasphemy in 
the very idea. My whole early training had bent 
my mind in the wrong direction. Now, with my 
fuller vision and stripped of all the theological 
misconceptions of my youth, I see how utterly 
wrong I was, and to me, one of the most wonder- 
ful discoveries of this wonderful life here, is that 
it is possible to return to full communication 
with you; and continue with perfect and un- 
broken joy, the union our Church consummated 
twenty years ago.' " 2 

It is interesting to compare Mr. Heslop's " con- 

i Our spirits, too, hear everything we say through the lady 
automatist; and often make remarks on what may be being 
talked about. 

2 This ought to convince us of the foolishness of bemoaning 
our relations' and friends' departure to the other world. 



128 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

version " to that of the Rev. Stainton Moses, who 
was not only converted, bnt " regenerated," as he 
says, through his commnnications with Impera- 
torj while he himself was still on earth. 

The late Rev. Arthur Chambers, who wrote the 
Foreword for Mrs. Heslop, says : " If I am not 
mistaken, many will rise up from the reading of 
this volume and will say : ' It has given me a 
fuller, grander and more comforting conception 
of what is implied by the term, u The Communion 
ofSaints"'" 1 

I do not know where or when the phrase " Com- 
munion " of Saints first occurred ; but this word 
only appears four times in the New Testament, 
and means " fellowship " according to the Greek 
(koinonia), as "The Fellowship of the Holy 
Ghost." " Saint " and " holy " are words used 
to signify a " Christian " in general. 

St. Paul uses the word " fellowship " when ex- 
plaining the Bread and Wine of the Lord's Sup- 
per as representing our union within Christ's 
Church. 

As an example of the use of the word " holy," 
St. Paul tells the Corinthians that if a child have 

i II Cor., 13, 14. 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 129 

one parent a Christian, that sanctifies the chil- 
dren, and they are " holy," that is they are 
Christians by birth, and of adult Christians he 
says : " The temple of God is holy ; which temple 
ye are." Of course, " holiness " means the 
Christ-like character. 

On this subject Julia writes : " As to the com- 
munion of saints, you say and sing all manner of 
things about the saints above and below being 
one army of the Living God ; but when any one of 
us on the other side tries to make any practical 
effort to enable you to realize the oneness and to 
make you feel that you are encompassed about by 
so great a cloud of witnesses, then there is an out- 
cry : i It is against the will of God/ ' It is tam- 
pering with demons.' Be not deceived by these 
specious outcries ! Am I a demon? Am I doing 
what is contrary to the will of God when I con- 
stantly try to inspire you with more faith in Him, 
more love for Him and all His creatures ; and, in 
short, try to bring you nearer and closer to God? 
You know I do all this. It is my joy and the law 
of my being. I should go on doing it even if you 
were to refuse to let me use your hand. I am 
only doing consciously to you what is being done 



130 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

to others who are more or less unconscious of the 
influences they are subject to." 1 

It is often asked whether Spiritualism will as- 
sure " consolation " to the bereaved by being able 
to communicate with the beloved ones. 

In reply to this question, Miss F. R. Scatcherd 
thus writes about Sir Oliver Lodge's new book, 
Raymond, under The New Science, its Testimony 
to Human Survival: 

" This precious volume reveals those aspects of 
humanity that are eternal in their appeal to man- 
kind. It testifies to fatherly and filial affection 
never obscured by the slightest cloud — to a 
6 Mother's Lament ' — ' Raymond, darling, you 
have gone from our world, and, oh, to ease the 
pain, I want to know if you are happy, and that 
you yourself are really talking to me, and no 
sham.' 

" For the sake of other Fathers and Mothers 
stricken as they have been, these parents have set 
aside the reticence natural in such circum- 
stances, and a record, endorsed by the whole 

i After Death, p. 29 f . She is addressing the late Mr. W. T. 
Stead, whose hand she is controlling. 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 131 

family circle, has been issued. Therein lies its 
uniqueness and its universal appeal." 

Like other Spirits, as Imperator, who allude 
to religion, following Christ's teaching to the let- 
ter, Julia writes : " I soon became accustomed to 
disregard all the distinctions I had made so much 
of when on earth. Then I used to ask if So-and- 
so was ' religious/ i. e., whether he belonged to 
this, or that, or the other 6 church/ Now these 
things do not interest me any more than the new 
frills and facings of fashion. We don't ask what 
church ... we never ask except so far as they 
stand in the way of real religion. We lament, 
and have continually to deplore, the fact that 
they are substituted for the love which is the ful- 
filling of the law. The degree of love with which 
any one loves measures his religion. Those who 
do not love are those who sit in outer darkness 
and in the valley of the shadow of death. Sin 
consists in the living without God, that is to say, 
without love." 

By " love," Julia, of course, means Agape; and 
St. Paul's " Psalm of Love " is the best descrip- 
tion of it, while Love is identical with St. James' 



132 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

definition of the Christian or " True Religion." 
Such disavowal of the " views " of all the 
" sects,'' " parties " or " divisions " in the Chris- 
tian Church on Earth — based on erroneous in- 
terpretations of Scripture — does not necessarily 
come all at once, on the other side. We know 
from his own words how long it took Rev. Stain- 
ton Moses to be " regenerated/' as he calls it, 
from false " Anglican " or " High Church " 
views, even while on earth. 

On the other side it may be as many or more 
years of tuition, for amongst our own spirit- 
friends who come to communicate we have had 
Roman Catholics, Freethinkers, and Methodists, 
as they have still described themselves. 

Again in alluding to the use of the proposed 
Bureau, Julia adds : " You will destroy, as if by 
a sword-cut or razor-slash, the whole theory of 
the future life that is conventionally held and 
believed by the Churches. You will allow those 
of us who are here to speak as to what we know, 
and see and feel. And it is not what you have 
been conventionally taught to expect. Now I do 
not think that you will find that what we have to 
tell you differs from what the more intelligent 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 133 

and spiritual believers have arrived at or have re- 
ceived by inspiration. The fundamental princi- 
ples are the same. We have nothing to tell you 
that was not known to the seers and that was de- 
clared by Jesus." 

The first three Gospels have little to say about 
Love. The disciples did not understand it until 
after the Resurrection ; but St. John's Gospel and 
Epistles are full of it. 

In an ethical sense it is not the same thing as 
what is ordinarily understood. It has been 
asked in one of our newspapers : " How can I 
love my enemies if they be the Huns? " Let us 
begin at the original source of Love as affection. 
It appears to be a feeling implanted in the con- 
stitution of animals as well as man, for mating 
purposes, and for the parental care for helpless 
offspring. This is outwardly shown by acts of 
affection. With man it begins with the family; 
with the tribe it loses this first element, but " af- 
fection " is replaced by " regard " to establish the 
oond of unity, especially for making defence 
against any common foe. It is the primitive 
form of entente cordiale. As tribes become 
welded into a nation, this " Common- weal " is 



134 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

called Patriotism, Love of one's country, etc. 
Before Christ came there it ended. Every na- 
tion was " naturally " at war with every other. 
Any nation might attack, provided no treaty ex- 
isted, any other country, making it tributary. 
There was no crime felt in sacking a town, mak- 
ing all the inhabitants slaves, or even in killing 
them, unless there had been a treaty, 1 

What did Christ do? He began with the indi- 
vidual. He took the two ancient command- 
ments : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and 
thy neighbour as thyself." But loving God then 
simply meant obeying His commandments, under 
the stress of temporal punishments and with the 
promise of temporal rewards. It was a " Scho- 
lastic " system ; so that St. Paul called the Law a 
" Schoolmaster " to bring man to Christ. 

As an example of loving one's neighbour the 
old law was to help any poor brother Israelite in 
distress, by lending him such as he needed, and 
not to harden his heart, etc. 

This kind of compulsory good behaviour does 
not tend to develop spontaneous generosity, nor 
even a conscience; not that the conscience did not 

i The Kaiser did not even respect this. 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 135 

exist, but it was as a general rule undeveloped ; so 
that there was no name for it in Hebrew. Never- 
theless, David was conscience-stricken after he 
had been rebuked by the prophet. 

St. Paul, on the other hand, frequently uses the 
word. This shows one chief difference between 
the two Testaments. The tables of stone are re- 
placed by the fleshly table of the heart. The Law 
was external; now it is a natural one and inter- 
nal. The use of threatened punishments is gone, 
and natural results take their place. There is no 
longer any temporal reward, but consequences of 
a good life will follow in this and the next world. 
Such depend upon the cultivation of " Love " in 
this world, as Our Lord clearly shows in His par- 
able of the Judgment Day ; which should never be 
forgotten. 

This proves what Love clearly means ; affection 
may or may not be present. It is the Reverence 
for God and Christ coupled with Faith which, 
however, remains simply a " head-belief " and is 
of no value, until it is proved by works of love. 
It is respect coupled with a willing self-sacrifice 
— a spontaneous and eager wish — to help others 
in any way one can, even to risking one's life, for 



136 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

a friend, stranger or foe. Has not the war re- 
vealed that abundantly? Pity for a wounded foe 
was thought to be contemptible by the ancients. 
Thanks to Christ, we treat a wounded Hun just 
as one of our own soldiers. This is to love the 
enemy in the true Christian sense. It grows by 
cultivation until it can become a passion to do 
good and self-sacrifice is a pleasure. It is the 
greatest one can entertain, when once it is re- 
alized; as has been done by many of our great 
philanthropists and workers for God and Christ. 
Now this is the " Love " on the other side as well 
as on this; for such is the universal attestation 
by all spirits who talk of love, such as Julia, 
Imperator, Mr. Heslop, and our own domestic 
spirit-friends. 

I happened to be explaining the above to a 
friend, and a spirit suddenly broke in : " Tell 
the Little Man he is quite right ! " 

Our Lord took a common Greek word for love, 
and elevated it to the highest place of honour in 
Christianity. It is Agape. 1 

When He gave that test-question to Peter: 
" Lovest thou Me? " He used the corresponding 

l See I Cor., ch. 13 f 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 137 

verb : " Agapas thou Me? " 1 Peter did not un- 
derstand Him, and replied with the ordinary 
verb then in use : " Thou knowest that I philo 
Thee." 2 

A different Hebrew word was used for " kiss " 
(Gen. 27, 26), but philein subsequently meant 
" to kiss " also ; 3 for in classical Greek this verb 
was practically confined to personal love and also 
in later times to be fond of doing things, etc. 
Hence to Peter himself it was more appropriate 
than the " reverential love " implied by Agape 
and Agapan* 

i John, 21, 15. 

2 The verb " to love " and the noun " Love " in Greek had a 
variety of significations, as used in the Septuagint. Thus: 
(1) Marital love as of Jacob for Rachel (Gen., 29, 10) ; It is 
the same word for a lover (Canticles, passim) ; (2) It is used 
to mean respect and consideration for others, as neighbours 
(Lev., 19, 18); and for the proselyte (Deut., 10, 18). It 

passed into a meaning for abstract ideas, as for Righteousness 
and Salvation (Ps., 70, 4) ; to love the Law (Ps., 119, 166) ; 
Love of Righteousness (Wisdom 6, 18); for "Love is the 
keeping of her Law." 

Another word was philein, to " love " as : " Savoury meat 
such as I love," Gen., 27, 4. Wisdom says "I love (agapan) 
them that love me" philein (Prov., 8, 17). Similarly, "whoso 
loveth wisdom" (Prov., 29, 3) ; to love cakes of raisins (Hos., 
3,1). 

3 Matt., 26, 48. Judas kissed Jesus. 
* John, 21, 55 ff. 



138 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

It does not replace ordinary love by casting out 
affection ; but tends to carry it with it. It is even 
shown by spirits to ourselves on earth. Controls 
frequently express their love for those to whom 
they write. Thus one invariably addresses our 
Lady writer: "Love, we, etc." They are good 
enough to express their love for myself. 

Julia has much to say — and she says it en- 
thusiastically — about Love on the other side. 
The following are a few sentences extracted al- 
most at random from her communications. 

" There is nothing to which you can compare 
our constantly loving state in this world: To 
love any one really, truly, means that we are put- 
ting ourselves in his place, loving him as our- 
selves, that we desire for him the best and give up 
ourselves and our pleasure in order to secure it 
for him. This is true love, and wherever you 
find it, you find a spark of God." 

Writing across the border to a dear Friend, 
Julia says to her : " O, Ellen, Ellen ! If I could 
come back and speak in the ears of the children 
of men I think I should wish to say nothing but 
this — Love. Love is the fulfilling of the law; 
Love is the seeing of the face of God. Love is 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 139 

God, God is Love. If you wish to be with God — 
Love! If you wish to be in Heaven — Love! 
Love is the first and last word." * 

Like Julia and others, the writer of Christ in 
You has frequent allusions to the prevailing 
" Love " on the other side. 

" Heaven is not a place, but a consciousness of 
God. ... As you emerge into this all-pervading 
love, the true life becomes manifest and is always 
the answer to the deepest and highest aspirations 
of the soul. It is Love fulfilling itself. 

" Do not only weep with those who weep, but 
help them by a mighty love. 2 

" Love is pressing through the very atmosphere 
round about us and you. Love requires readi- 
ness and obedience; and we are called to do its 
bidding. Are you willing to obey even unto the 
death of the Cross? That cross is the place of 
your sacrifice for all men. All must go to Cal- 
vary, there to become one with the Father. 
Greater love hath no man than this. Love is the 
atmosphere wherein all that is highest is nour- 
ished and fed. Love dwells in every human life, 
however degraded it may seem to you. Love 

i Op. cit. y p. 19. t Op. cit.y p. 9. 



140 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

much, and Christ shall do His work through you ; 
for He loves your world, and will never cease un- 
til it has become the Kingdom of Heaven." * 
The loving personality remains. 

" I can tell you for a certainty that you will 
retain your personality just as long as you need 
it ; and you will need it much longer yet. I am 
allowed to say that the meeting with your loved 
ones will be sweetly familiar, a great deal better 
than you can imagine, for they and you will be 
enriched by the love between you. Your loss is 
always gain. You can help them by your love 
and prayer, and they help you; think often of 
them. . . . There is nothing untoward or strange. 
You are here just what you have made yourselves, 
and they who love you would not have you with 
them until you have finished. In fact, you are 
near them now ; but the veil is over you at pres- 
ent. Love, Love, Love. This is the potent 
force ! 2 

"As your Scriptures tell you repeatedly the 
continuity of life is no more broken when the 
breath leaves the body than the continuity of 
child-life broken by the incident of birth. St. 

i Christ in You, p. 47. 2 Qp. cit., p. 132. 



AGAPE, TKUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 141 

Paul says that Christ Jesus abolished death and 
brought life and incorruption to light. 1 It is 
the means by which life is liberated, becoming 
more intense. Memory exists, although we have 
learnt the power to dissolve [it?] into nothing- 
ness — this is true forgetfulness — all that is 
not of use. 2 But I would have you know that 
you are greater than your form, that you have 
no limit." 3 

As Julia and others, including our own spirit- 
friends, speak of " Love," so Private Dowding 
writes : " I want to say a few words about love. 
Also, because love is spoken about too much al- 
ready, whereas it should be lived." By which he, 
of course, means Agqpe or Spiritual Enthusiasm 
of doing good. " Never cease from loving. Je- 
sus said a good deal about Love. Look up what 
He said and live it. 

" Love God by pouring yourself away. Love 
your fellows by giving them all you possess of 
light and truth. 

i II Tim., 1, 10. 

2 I have remarked elsewhere that spirits seem to forget much 
of their life passed on earth. 

3 Christ in You, p. 134. If a medium asks a spirit, in the 
habit of communicating with us : " Are you here now ? " The 
reply may be : " No, we are not here at present/' 



142 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

" Love, LOVE, for her own blessed sake. Such 
love will bring you nearer heaven." 

Let the reader remember how St. James de- 
fines " Religion " : " Pure Religion and unde- 
fined before God the Father is — to visit the 
fatherless and widows in their affliction; and to 
keep himself unspotted from the world." That 
is Love. 

Now turn to St. Paul's " Psalm of Love " and 
lastly to the " Final Reward." 

Another spirit writer says the same thing in 
the following words : " This countless spirit 
multitude all know and love one another. They 
gather together from the far parts of space and 
from the higher worlds to communicate the result 
of their missions and labours. No jealousy and 
no after-thought can arise in these pure spirits. 
Love, Faith and Sincerity preside over these re- 
unions." 

No wonder is it that St. Paul could conclude 
his memorable " Psalm of Love " with the words : 
" Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Love ; 
but the greatest of these is Love." 

Love or Agape, the Enthusiasm for doing good, 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 143 

is the Rock of Christianity. It was undeveloped 
and even unknown in the days covered by most of 
the Old Testament, wherein the " Righteousness 
of the Law " took its place, i. e., merely obedience 
to external commands under threats of punish- 
ment or hopes of reward. 1 

With regard to the difference between this 
world and the next, Clement of Alexandria, writ- 
ing at the end of the first century upon Our 
Lord's words, says: " ' In this world (says the 
Saviour) ' there is marriage and giving in mar- 
riage/ in which alone the difference between male 
and female is to be discovered ; but ' in that which 
is to come, it is not so.' There the enjoyments of 
that friendly and holy life which arises out of 
marriage, will not be confined to male and fe- 
male; but will belong to man generally as a 
species, when earthly desires and he have parted 

i Some of our spirit friends rebuked me for thinking too lit- 
tle of the value of the Old Testament ; so I asked for some par- 
ticular as an example. They said : " In the matter of right- 
eousness." So I replied by asking if they had remembered 
what Christ said : " Unless your righteousness exceed " — that 
of the Old Testament, *. e., the righteousness of merely obeying 
the Law through fear. — " Ye shall not enter the kingdom of 
Heaven." The Spirits observed : " We had forgotten that ! " 
They said in reply to a question : " We are Methodists." 



144 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

company; for man is the general name common 
to both sexes." x 

This exactly tallies with what the spirits say 
today. Though many are known to have been 
men or women, others decline to say. If we ask 
one which he was, the reply is : " We decline to 
say; we have no passions." 

Similarly Mr. Heslop says : " It is only as we 
pass into this fuller life here, that we can in any 
adequate measure grasp its real meaning, the full 
glory of love. For here it is the very air we 
breathe, the essence of our being. It is all love, 
radiating from the Divine Father, and filling us 
with unutterable joy and bliss." 

I have italicized two phrases; to remind the 
reader that St. John used the same expression of 
" glory " as applicable to both God and Christ, 
an echo of Our Lord's own words, summed up in 
" God is Love," while " glory " means " Char- 
acter," or " grace and truth." 

Mr. Heslop's eulogy of Love runs strictly paral- 
lel with that of Julia and is echoed by other 

i Christian Doctrine & Practice in the Second Century. 
(Illustrated in the writings of Clement of Alexandria; A.D. 
180 to A.D. 202). 1857. 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 145 

writers; while our own domestic spirit-friends 
tell us they " know nothing of theology but all 
practise love." 

Mr. Heslop has much to say on the practical 
work of Love on the other side shown by the re- 
deeming spirits. For example : " We are re- 
joicing today because we have brought up one 
out of the bitterness of despair into the first 
glimmering of hope and light and love. So you 
see I have been at work and my labours have not 
been in vain. 

" You see, we can do absolutely nothing till 
the desire for purity and goodness awakens 
within the soul. We have watched this one, long- 
ing for the first gleam of desire after holiness, 
and, thank God, this was my message on Mon- 
day. So I flew to him with other loving spirits, 
that we might foster that little flame of good de- 
sire, for fear it flicker out into despair. Truly 
there is joy among the angels when one sinner 
shall repent." 

Imperator enumerates in his Spirit Teachings 
the following as being all embraced by Love or 
Agape: "Tolerance for divergence of opinion; 
charitable construction of doubtful words and 



146 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

deeds; kindliness in intercourse; readiness to 
help without any desire for recompense; cour- 
tesy and gentleness of demeanour; patience un- 
der misrepresentations, honesty and integrity of 
purpose, tempered by loving-kindness and for- 
bearance; sympathy with sorrow; mercy, pity 
and tenderness of heart ; respect for authority in 
its sphere and respect for the rights of the weak 
and frail. These and kindred qualities, which 
are the very essence of the Christ-like character, 
which we sum up in the one word " Charity " or 
" Active Love." x 

Imperator, in replying to Mr. Stainton Hoses' 
question as to the perpetuation of marriage ties 
hereafter, observes : " That depends entirely on 
similarity of taste and equality of development. 
In the case of this being attained, the spirits can 
progress side by side . . . but there can be no 
community of interest save between congenial 
souls. Consequently no tie can be perpetuated 
which is not a help to progress. The loving 
bonds which encircle souls are the greatest in- 

i Spirit Teachings, p. 155. The word " Charity " is derived 
from the Latin Caritas of the Vulgate, through the French 
ChariU. 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 147 

centive to mutual development and so the rela- 
tions are perpetuated. All souls that are mu- 
tually helpful remain in loving intercourse as 
long as it is profitable to them. When the period 
arrives at which it is more profitable for them to 
separate, they go their way without sorrow; for 
they can still commune and share each other's 
interests. You cannot understand how souls can 
be apart, as you count space, and yet be, as you 
would say, intimately united. We know no time, 
no space. 

" Love unites spirits at whatever distance, e. g., 
the wife may love the degraded, besotted ruffian 
who mutilates her and strives to crush her spirit. 
The hour of dissolution will free her from slavery 
and pain. She will soar while he will sink, but 
the bond of love will not be snapped, though the 
spirits may no longer consort together. Space 
with us does not exist ; so you may dimly under- 
stand that with us union means identity of de- 
velopment, community of interest, mutual and 
affectionate progression. We know of no such 
indissoluable ties as exist with you." 

St. James in his Definition of the Christian 
Religion adds a man's Duty to Himself, as well 



148 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

as Love to others; viz., in the words: "Keep 
himself unspotted from the world." 

Imperator sums up this part of man's duty as 
follows : 

" Let him crush self, purify his inmost Spirit, 
driving out impurity as a plague, and elevating 
his aims to their highest possible. Let him love 
Truth as his Deity, to which all else shall bow; 
let him follow it as his sole aim, careless whither 
the quest may lead him, and round him shall cir- 
cle the messengers of the most High, and in his 
inmost soul he shall see light." 

* IMPERATOR. 

Such is the preparation of a man's own char- 
acter, not only for the negative duty of " keeping 
unspotted from the world " but for the active 
life of humanity, or practical work on behalf of 
others; but whatever is done to them is done to 
Christ. 

Some of our domestic spirits once suddenly 
remarked : " We want you to do work for the 
Virgin Mary. We are Roman Catholics; your 
Protestant Religion has too much ritual. There 
should be more of the inner man." 

I did not reply with a tu quoque; but this re- 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 149 

quest showed that they had not yet learnt to see 
that Roman Catholicism had tended to displace 
Christ from His supreme position on the other 
side. They had probably forgotten His saying: 
" Whatsoever ye do unto the least of these My 
brethren, ye do it unto M e." 

It is interesting to find that in the Middle 
Ages a Saint could likewise completely take the 
place of Our Lord. In the Chronicle of Jocelin 
of Brakeland (Bury St. Edmunds) dating from 
1173 to 1202, Mr. F. E. Tomlins, who translated 
it, writes as follows : " Throughout the whole of 
Jocelin's Chronicle (i: e., of the events at the Ab- 
bey, when Sampson of Pettington was Abbot) 
the name of the Saviour is never once mentioned. 
1 God and St. Edmund/ < The Abbot/ and < St. 
Edmund ' are phrases of common occurrence ; 
indeed, nothing short of a narrative of this de- 
scription could fully develop the degradation of 
the Christian religion by means of Saint-worship. 
The King and martyrs' influences upon his vo- 
taries is supported by the fear of vengeance. . . . 
The Chronicler evidently felt convinced that true 
religion and devotion consisted in the monkish 
observances he is so accurate in detailing." 



150 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Contrast this gross misunderstanding of Chris- 
tianity with the following example of what the 
Truth really is, as to Our Lord's teaching. 

We have seen how Mr. Heslop was sent to the 
debased spirits to try and elevate them on the 
other side. The following is what is being done 
on this earth. 

The nearest approach to this loving work car- 
ried on by Spirit-Missionaries on the other side, 
is the voluntary efforts of the Salvation Army to 
rescue the fallen and debased all over the world. 
Hear one from London. After describing the 
awful state of the streets in " A Part of London," 
the writer proceeds : " Let me put the common 
question but with real emphasis: Would you 
allow a dog to live in these streets? 

" Well, into these streets come day after day, 
and every Sunday, the little vigorous corps of 
the Salvation Army stationed in this quarter of 
London. The Adjutant of this corps some years 
ago was a beautiful and delicate girl. She 
prayed at the bedside of dying men and women 
in these lodging houses. She taught children to 
pray ; she went into public houses and persuaded 
the violent blackguards of the town to come 



- :- ■ ■ ■-.-'. J , '.J >, 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 151 

away; she pleaded with the most desperate 
women of street corners; she preached in the 
open streets on Sundays; she stood guard over 
the doors of men mad for drink and refused to 
let them in. On one occasion this little woman 
was walking home through evil streets after mid- 
night, when a drunken man asked her if he might 
travel by her side. After going some way the 
man said : ' No, you aren't afraid ' ; and then 
he muttered to himself : i Never insults the likes 
of you because you care for the likes of us J 
' Ah ! ' exclaimed an old gaol-bird, showing me the 
photograph of this woman, i If anybody goes to 
heaven, it'll be that little angel of God.' 

" They call her the 'Angel-Adjutant.' " What 
is this but a beautiful, practical illustration of 
Agape f 

" The Gospel of humanity," writes Imperator, 
" is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the only 
Gospel that man needs, the only one that can 
reach his wants and minister to his necessities. 

" We continue to preach that same evangel. 
By commission from the same God, by authority 
and inspiration from the same source, do we come 
now as apostles of this heaven-sent Gospel. We 



152 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

declare truths the same as Jesus taught. We 
preach His Gospel purified from the glosses and 
misinterpretations which man has gathered 
round it. We would spiritualize that which man 
has hidden under a heap of materialism." 

Of such missionaries Imperator observes: 
" You have among you on earth spirits bright 
and noble, whose mission in the earth-life is 
among the dens of infamy and haunts of vice, 
who are preparing for themselves a crown of 
glory, whose brightest jewels are self-sacrifice 
and love. So amongst us there are spirits who 
give themselves to work in the spheres of the 
degraded and abandoned. By their efforts many 
spirits rise, and when rescued from degradation, 
work out a long and laborious purification in the 
probation spheres, where they are removed from 
influences for evil, and entrusted to the care of 
the pure and good. So the desire for holiness is 
encouraged and the spirit is purified. 

" They that will not seek for anything that is 
good, that wallow in impurity and vice, sink 
lower and lower, until they lose conscious iden- 
tity, and become practically extinct; so far as per- 
sonal existence is concerned. 



AGAPE, TRUE CHRISTIAN LOVE 153 

" This is the unpardonable sin. Unpardonable 
not because the Supreme will not pardon them, 
but because the sinner chooses it to be so. Un- 
pardonable, because the pardon is impossible 
where sin is congenial and penitence unfelt. 

" Punishment is ever the immediate conse- 
quence of sin ; it is of its essence, not arbitrarily 
meted out, but the inevitable result of the viola- 
tion of law. The consequences of such trans- 
gression cannot be altogether averted, though 
they may be palliated by remorse, the effect of 
which is to breed a loathing for sin, and a desire 
for good. This is the first step, the retracing of 
false steps, the undoing of error, and by conse- 
quence the creation in the spirit of another long- 
ing. The spiritual atmosphere is changed, and 
into it good angels enter readily and aid the 
striving soul. It is isolated from all evil 
agencies. Remorse and sorrow are fostered. 
The spirit becomes gentle and tender, amenable 
to influences of good. So the results of former 
sins are purged away, and the length and bitter- 
ness of punishment alleviated. This is true for 
all time." 



CHAPTER X 

THE TRUE SPIRITUAL MEANINGS OF 
AND " HELL " 

Life beyond the Border-line. — The Universality of Love. 
— Immutable laws govern our deeds on Earth. — As 
"Heaven" is within us (Luke, 17, 21), so is "Hell."— No 
punishment from without but natural results of the con- 
sciousness of sin. — Always remedial by repentance. — M. 
Leon Denis on " Judgment " by the Conscience. — The 
meaning of Gehenna. — Julia's expression " Hatred is Hell " 
and " Love is Heaven." — The Sinner cannot " see God " ; 
but the pure in heart shall (Matt. 5, 8). — The effects of 
selfishness. — Our characters become visible to all on the 
other side. — Private Dowding's experiences. — Further con- 
firmations. — Mr. Heslop's mission to the "lost." — Julia's 
account of the Messengers of Love, who meet all alike, 
good and bad, on their passing over; but the latter cannot 
see them ; — thus confirming Dowding's own experience of 
the " clouds " around him. — " The sin of omission " not 
specified by the spirits, but was strongly condemned by 
Jesus Christ (Matt. 25, 31 ff). 

Imperator writes : " Immutable laws govern 
the results of deeds. Deeds of good advance the 
spirits, whilst deeds of evil degrade and retard 
them. Happiness is found in progress and in 

154 



HEAVEN AND HELL 155 

gradual assimilation to the God-like and the per- 
fect. The spirit of divine love assimilates the 
acts and in mutual blessing the spirits find their 
happiness. For them there is no craving for 
sluggish idleness, no cessation of desire for 
progressive advancement in knowledge. Human 
passions and human needs and wishes are gone 
with the body and the spirit lives a spirit-life of 
purity, progress, and love. Such is its heaven. 
We know of no hell save that within the soul — a 
hell which is fed by the flame of unpurified and 
untamed lust and passion, which is kept alive by 
remorse and agony of sorrow, which is fraught 
with the pangs that spring unbidden from the 
results of past misdeeds; and from which the 
only escape lies in retracing the steps and culti- 
vating the qualities which shall bear fruit in love 
and the knowledge of God. 

" Of ' punishments ' we know, indeed, but it is 
not the vindictive lash of an angry God ; but the 
natural outcome of conscious sin, remediable by 
repentance and reparation, personally wrought 
out in pain and shame, not by coward cries for 
mercy." 

Here again, as our own spirit friends said of 



156 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the German soldier : " He comes to us, too, buG 
we can do nothing until he truly repents. These 
regrets for what he is suffering will not help 
him." 

M. Leon Denis confirms Imperator by what he 
too learnt from the spirit land. This writer dedi- 
cates his book Here and Hereafter: " To the 
Great and Noble Spirits who have revealed to me 
the august Mysteries of Destiny, Whose Teach- 
ings have strengthened within me the Sentiment 
of Justice, the Love of Wisdom and of Duty." 

He thus gives us the views of the Spirits on 
The Judgment : " The recompense of Chastise- 
ment of the spirit proceeds from its own Con- 
science. It comes from within and not from 
without. The Spirit is its own judge; when the 
vestment of flesh has fallen away, the light pene- 
trates and the soul is laid bare; then, within it 
there appear, clear-cut as a living picture, all its 
deeds, thoughts and desires. . . . This evocation 
of the past entails the dread sentence — the 
Judgment of his own Conscience, which is, in a 
manner, the judgment of God. Painful though 
this self-examination may be, it is necessary, for 



HEAVEN AND HELL 157 

it may form the basis of a new resolve which 
will lead to regeneration." 1 

Our Lord again and again doomed certain 
characters to Gehenna ; 2 which gave rise to the 
idea of hell, where sinners were supposed to burn 
for ever ! Julia says : " People do not believe 
in the hell of fire any more, but they have by 
their recoil forgotten that there is a 'real hell' 
for Hatred is hell, and God is with all who love, 
and those who do not love are without God." . . . 
" There is, when the loveless soul comes here, as 
much care taken to welcome it as when the soul 
of love arrives. But the selfish soul is blind and 
dark, and shudders in the dark. The imagina- 
tion, which here is far more powerful than with 
you, fills the solitude with spectres, and the sin- 
ner feels he is encompassed by the constantly re- 
newed visions of his deeds. Nor is this all ; he 
sees those whom he has injured, and he fears. If 

i Op. cit., pp. 2, 6 ff. 

2 A valley named after the " son of Hinnom," a man of 
whom nothing is known. Human sacrifices were offered there; 
and it was the place of destruction by fire of the offal and 
refuse of the city of Jerusalem; and so kept constantly burn- 
ing. Hence it became a symbol of the imaginary place of de- 
struction of the wicked. 



158 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ever a soul needs a Saviour and Deliverer, it is 
when imagination and memory without love re- 
create all anew the selfish acts of a loveless 
life. 

" The sinfulness of sin (writes Julia) chiefly 
shows itself in the inability to * see ? God. The 
' punishment ' of sin which is remedial, is the 
sense of a loneliness and darkness which over- 
whelms the loveless souls when they come into 
this world; the atmosphere of which is eternal 
love. This they endure until such time as they 
love. When they love, they turn to God, and see 
in the darkness a ray of the Love, infinite and 
everlasting, in which they are able to realize, as 
we do, that they live and move and have their 
being." 

Julia here applies to the other world precisely 
what St. Paul said of the heathen Greeks who 
were seekers after God. 

M. Leon Denis again thus writes : " Selfish 
men, those who are exclusively taken up with 
their own pleasures and interests, are preparing 
for themselves a painful future. Loving but 
themselves — having neither helped, sustained 
nor consoled any other soul in need — they now 



HEAVEN AND HELL 159 

find in this new life neither sympathy nor aid. 
Lonely and abandoned, time flows for them mo- 
notonously, and slowly on. A gloomy spleen, an 
anguished expectancy, takes possession of them. 
The regret of lost hours, of a wasted life, a hatred 
for the wretched interests that once absorbed 
them, torments and crazes them. They suffer 
and wander on until some charitable thought at 
last occurs to them, glowing in the darkness of 
their night like a heaven-born ray of hope; but 
the dawn does not finally appear until, acting on 
the advice of some enlightened and kindly spirit, 
they sever, by an act of volition, the fluidic net- 
work that enmeshes them and resolutely deter- 
mine to undertake a better career." 

Julia writes as follows: "The thoughts and 
intents of the heart, the imaginations of the mind, 
these are the things by which we are judged ; for 
it is they which make up and create as it were the 
real character of the inner self, which becomes 
visible after the leaving of the body. 

"Every thought has a form; and this shape 
created by the will [rather, automatically by a 
natural law?] is photographed in us, as in a 
mirror wherein reflections would imprint them- 



160 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

selves. One fluidic envelope reflects and pre- 
serves like a register all the facts of our exist- 
ence. [Hence, Memory?] This register is 
closed during life. The flesh is the thick cover 
which hides its contents from us, but at death it 
slowly opens, and its pages are spread out be- 
neath our eyes. The disembodied spirit thus 
bears within it, visible to all, its heaven or its 
hell." As Christ told the Jews that Heaven is 
within us ; so is Hell. 

Speaking of the Spirit-world, Private Dowding 
says : " It is everywhere. The life of Spirit is 
eternal, perfect, supreme. We humans hide from 
the light. We grovel among the illusions cre- 
ated by our thoughts. We surround ourselves 
with misconceptions; we refuse to rise into the 
Christ sphere. The Christ sphere is everywhere, 
and yet by some strange paradox we are able to 
shut it out from view." * 

One's own character appears to create the dark 
screen, not the human will. 

Dowding speaks of a most deplorable being, in 
" Hell," i. e., a " thought region " . . . " not a 
place." . . . "My brother had been told off to 

i Op. cit., p. 40 f . 



HEAVEN AND HELL 161 

rescue him. At first I refused to go. Then I 
went. . . . An angel of light came to protect us, 
otherwise we should have been lost in the dark- 
ness of the pit." x 

Just as others write, Dowding thus speaks of 
the " darkness " : " We descended gloomy ave- 
nues. The darkness grew. Even the angel's 
light grew dim." He describes an extraordinary 
but evil attraction associated with this place: 
" Something sensual within me leaped and 
burned." " Those who die filled with thoughts 
of selfishness and sensuality are attracted down 
the grey avenues towards this hell of the senses." 
" This hell consists in believing the unreal to be 
real. It consists in the lure of the senses with- 
out the possibility of gratifying them." ... It 
is : " All the thoughts of lust and passion, greed, 
hatred, envy, and above all, selfishness, passing 
through the minds of men and women, generate 
the ' condition ? called hell. Purgatory and hell 
are different states. We all must needs pass 
through a purging, purifying process after leav- 

i Op. cit., p. 57, Mr. Heslop similarly wrote : " I was called 
away just as you were taking down my suggestions. I went to 
the dark places/' etc. {Speaking across the Border-Line, p. 
31.) 



162 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ing earth life. I am still in purgatory, some day 
I shall rise above it. The majority who come 
over here rise above, or rather through purgatory 
into higher conditions. A minority refuse to re- 
linquish their thoughts and beliefs in the pleas- 
ures of sin and the reality of the sense life. 
They sink by the weight of their own thoughts. 
No outside power can attract a man against his 
will." 

Such is precisely in accordance with Mr. 
Heslop's experience : " You see," he says, " we 
can do absolutely nothing till the desire for 
purity and goodness awakens within the soul." 
In Mr. Heslop's case the man did show a spark, 
or "gleam of desire," so he, with other loving 
spirits, at once flew to aid him. Not so, in the 
case of Dowding. The angel and his brother 
had to return for " He would not come away ; 
they had to leave him. . . . Fear held him. He 
said his existence was awful ; but he was afraid 
to move lest worse conditions should befall him." 

Another writer supplies an interesting com- 
ment on the words of St. Paul; it came from a 
" Messenger," one of a group led by " The Strong 
Spirit " and " The Priest " : " Imagine for a 



HEAVEN AND HELL 163 

moment what that change must be to the indi- 
vidual whose individuality is almost entirely 
mortal. The immortal spirit comes like an un- 
timely birth into a spiritual world — and man, 
giving up the ghost where is he? Oh ! lost souls 
are no dream! Lost souls by thousands come 
into spirit-life, and are lost in this way ; that the 
mental individuality is gone, and the immortal 
spirit gropes and wails, and requires to be fed, 
and is as helpless as the infant born before its 
time. The rightly appointed process has not 
been carried on. The poor immortal spirit has 
been entombed in the mortal flesh so that it has 
not grown or developed. . . . On the other hand, 
if you had seen out of the poor clay such spirits 
or souls arise, as I have seen rise, strong, gentle 
and brave, ready for the warfare with evil and 
sorrow in the next life; if you had heard the 
1 Well done, good and faithful/ you would under- 
stand that there is joy in the presence of the 
angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, or 
rather, over one mortal, who on earth-life can so 
put on immortality as to enter spirit-life, a spirit 
royal and beautiful and loving. 

" I want you to see that those men and women 



164 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

who are redeemed in mortal life are born re- 
deemers in spirit-life, and are ready to take or- 
ders when thej come." 

A spirit who lately passed over remarked to 
us — what may be a common condition : " We 
are all not very happy, for we all feel that we 
might have done better on earth." 

One can well believe such to be a universal 
experience at first; but there are plenty of help- 
ers there to show us how to rise at once if we only 
will to rise. 

Yet another communication from Mr. Heslop 
— he writes to his wife from the other world, 
which bears on this subject. " I have been away 
on a mission to the Land of Darkness. I had a 
sudden call to go there to help one to whom I am 
appointed to minister. 

" Your world is in darkness when compared 
with the Christ sphere; but it is brilliant when 
contrasted with those regions where I have just 
been. There are souls there filled with the tor- 
ture of remorse, more bitter than anything you 
can conceive possible. Truly they must work out 
their own salvation with strong crying and many 



HEAVEN AND HELL 165 

tears." 1 We go to carry comfort to them. To 
speak of the love of the Divine Saviour, which 
alone can lead them out of darkness into His 
glorious light. 

"We are rejoicing today because we have 
brought up one out of the bitterness of despair 
into the first glimmering of hope and light and 
love. So you see I have been at work, and my 
labour has not been in vain." 

What Julia says about the wicked ones is as 
follows : " So far as I have been able to ascer- 
tain, the Messengers of Love and Mercy meet all 
men when they die. In this there is no distinc- 
tion made between the saved and the lost. 2 But 
the latter have not the faculty to see him. The 
former not only profit by his counsels, but feel 
him and know he is with them. It is to all that 
the good Lord ministers — to all on your side 
and on this. His loving kindness is over all His 
creatures. But some know Him not, and when 
He would draw them nearer to His heart, they 

i Op. tit., p. 29. 

2 Julia means of course the "good" and the "bad"; 
" saved " and " lost " imply ultimate conditions, which cannot 
apply to new arrivals on the other side. 



166 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

are as if they saw, heard, felt nothing. They suf- 
fer, as it is necessary that they may be rid of the 
sin-stains which their loveless life has left upon 
their souls. 

" The sinfulness of sin chiefly shows itself in 
the inability to ' see God/ whereas Our Lord 
said : ' The pure in heart shall see God.' The 
punishment [or rather the natural and inevitable 
result], of sin which is remedial, is the sense of 
loneliness and darkness x which overwhelms the 
loveless souls when they come into this world, 
the atmosphere of which is eternal love. This 
they endure until such time as they love. 2 When 
they love, then they turn to God, and see in the 
darkness a ray of the Love infinite and everlast- 
ing in which they are able to realize, as we do, 
that they live and move and have their being. 

" There is, when the loveless soul comes here, 
as much care taken to welcome it as when the 
soul of love arrives. But the selfish soul is blind 
and dark, and shudders in the dark. The imag- 
ination, which here is far more powerful than 

i Mr. Heslop also speaks of this " darkness." 

2 So too, Mr. Heslop is emphatic on the fact that nothing 
can be done for them until the first sign of true repentance is 
there. 

/ 



HEAVEN AND HELL 167 

with you, fills the solitude with spectres, and 
the sinner feels he is encompassed by the con- 
stantly renewed visions of his deeds. Nor is this 
all; he sees those whom he has injured, and he 
fears. If ever a soul needs a Saviour and De- 
liverer, it is when imagination and memory with- 
out love recreate all anew the selfish acts of a 
loveless life." 

Julia leaves out of consideration the " sins of 
omission." They are implied by " Selfishness," 
but Christ laid special stress upon them; as in 
His parable of the rich man and Lazarus and 
specially in His parable of the Judgment Day. 
We must assume that the absence of love, as 
Julia says of the sinner, is the same thing as 
doing nothing for Love's sake. 

I quote the following extract of spirit-teaching, 
through Mr. Leon Denis : " With the passing of 
centuries, Christianity has become vitiated until 
it now exercises but a feeble and inadequate ac- 
tion over man's life and character. Spiritual- 
ism has now come to take up and to carry on the 
task that was allotted to Christianity. Upon 
the invisible spirits has devolved the mission to 
set all things straight, to enter into the humblest 



168 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

as well as into the proudest dwellings and — 
immeasurably strong — to undertake the regen-" 
eration of humanity. The notion of demons [in 
N. T. miscalled devils?] and of a place of end- 
less torment can no longer be entertained by any 
sensible person. Satan is a myth, and no crea- 
ture is eternally condemned to evil." But he 
map disappear in the Second Death, if he chooses 
to " quench the Spirit," and to bring upon him- 
self self-annihilation. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT NOT ACCEPTED 
IN THE NEXT WORLD, BUT REPLACED BY THE 
"AT-ONE-MENT," i. e., THE RECONCILIATION OF 
MAN TO GOD, ON HIS SINCERE REPENTANCE AND 
AMENDMENT OF LIFE. — THE SACRAMENT OF THE 



Imperator's explanation of the false doctrine of the 
Atonement corroborated by Mr. Heslop. — Will the World 
receive their revelation of the Truth? — Mr. Heslop's 
reply to one who exclaimed: "If the Lord Jesus Christ 
did not die in my stead, then I am for ever lost ! " — Mr. 
Heslop's conversion to the truth on the other side, com- 
pared with Rev. Stainton Moses' regeneration on this 
earth. — God's forgiveness to the contrite sinner is Christ's 
teaching and not any vicarious suffering on His part. — 
Our sins confront us on passing over. — The Bible has been 
misread. — The meaning of sacrifice. — Ezekiel, on man's 
own responsibilities. — The meaning of " for " in the New 
Testament. — Forgiveness follows true repentance instan- 
taneously. — St. Paul's teaching of God " reconciling man 
to Himself." — Man's free-will, an essential element. — His 
Conscience, the sole judge of his conduct. — Mr. Lamb's 
pamphlet on "Unbelief, the World's greatest sin." — The 
true meanings of words used in a wrong sense. — What 
Christ teaches us. — Agape, called "Love" is really the 
" Enthusiasm of the spirit of humanity." — St. James' 
Definition of the Christian Religion. — Mr. Lamb's false 
statements. — The Old and the New Covenant. — Dr. West- 

169 



170 KELIGION OF THE SPIEIT WORLD 

cott's interpretations. — The supposed " Imputation n ofl 
righteousness from Christ to man, impossible. — Terms ex- 
plained. — The true meaning of our Lord's death upon the 
Cross. — St. James' Definition of the Christian Religion. — 
This is summed up in Faith and Love. — Dr. Westcott's in- 
terpretation. — Illustration of false teaching in the " Re- 
vival " of 1858. — No trace of the Atonement in the earliest 
Christian writers, the " Apostolic Fathers." — The Spirits' 
view of The Lord's Supper. 

The Atonement is treated at length by Impera- 
tor, and also by Mr. Heslop; and they are per- 
fectly " at one " on this important subject. The 
following is Imperator^s position : 

" You ask how the sign of the Cross can be 
prefixed to such teaching. Friend, the spiritual 
truth of which that sign is typical is the very 
cardinal truth which it is our special mission to 
declare. The self-denying love which would ben- 
efit humanity even at the sacrifice of life and 
home and earthly happiness — the pure spirit 
of the Christ — this is what we would declare to 
you as the God-like spirit. This is the true sal- 
vation from meanness and self-aggrandizement, 
and self -pi easing and luxurious sloth, which can 
i redeem ' humanity and make of men the chil- 
dren of God. This self-abnegation and incarnate 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 171 

love is that which can i atone ' for sin, and make 
man like to God. This is the true Atonement! 
Not, indeed, a reconciliation of sin-stained hu- 
manity to an angry and holy God, purchased by 
the sacrifice of His sinless Son, but a higher and 
truer atonement in the ennobling of the nature, 
the purifying of the spirit; the making of the 
human and the divine, ONE in aim and purpose 
— the drawing of man's spirit, even whilst in- 
carnated, up nearer and nearer to the Divine. 

" This was the mission of the Christ. In this 
He was a manifestation of God, the Son of God, 
the Saviour of man, the Reconciler ; the i At- 
one-r ' ; and herein we perpetuate His work, we 
carry on His mission, we work under His sym- 
bol, we fight against the enemies of His faith, 
against all who ignorantly or wilfully dishonour 
Him, even though it be under the banner of 
orthodoxy and under the protection of His name. 

" Much that we teach must still be new and 
strange even to those who have progressed in 
knowledge; but the days shall come wiien men 
shall recognize the oneness of Christ's teaching 
on earth with ours; and the human garb, gross 
and material, in which it has been shrouded, shall 



172 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

be rent asunder, and men shall see the true 
grandeur of the life and teaching of Him whom 
they ignorantly worship. In those days they 
shall worship with no less reality, but with a 
more perfect knowledge; and they shall know 
that the sign under which we speak is the symbol 
of purity and self-sacrificing love to them and to 
their brethren for all time. This end is our 
earnest endeavour to attain. Judge of our mis- 
sion by this standard, and it is God, god-like; 
noble as He is noble; pure as He is pure; truth- 
giving as He is true; elevating and saving, and 
purifying the spirit from the grossness of earthly 
conceptions and raising it to the very atmos- 
phere and neighbourhood of the spiritual and the 
divine. Ponder our words: and seek for guid- 
ance, if not through us, then through Him who 
sent us even as in earlier days He sent that ex- 
alted spirit of purity, charity and self-sacrifice, 
whom men called Jesus, and who was the Christ. 

" Him we adore even now. His name we 
reverence, 
His words we echo. His teaching lives 
again in ours. 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 173 

He and we are of God : and in His name we 
come. 

* IMPERATOR. 

I will show later how this teaching is strictly 
in accordance with the New Testament, where the 
original Greek words are correctly interpreted. 
I will now only quote one text to show that St. 
Paul agrees perfectly with Imperator in regard- 
ing the " Atonement " as signifying simply 
" Reconciliation " of man to God : " If, while 
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God, 
through the death of His Son ; much more, being 
reconciled, shall we be saved by His life; and 
not only so, but we also rejoice in God, through 
our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have 
now received the reconciliation.' ' (R.V.) (A.V. 
Atonement, i. e., at-one-ment. ) 

Mr. Heslop thus expresses himself on the same 
subject: "Try and keep quite clearly in your 
mind what Our Lord's atonement really was, 
and what it was not. The atonement was the ex- 
pression through Christ of the love of the Father 
even unto death, for every human soul. It en- 
ables us to draw nearer to the Father than was 



174 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

possible before Christ died. But this is a great 
mystery which you cannot fully understand. By 
assuming the human form, Christ gave the crown- 
ing dignity to humanity and so caused an at-one- 
ment between us and God. Now that this at- 
one-ment is accomplished by Christ, the Holy 
Spirit can take complete possession of the heart, 
and by filling it with the Divine Presence gradu- 
ally purify it from sin. It was to bring us into 
this soul-union that Christ lived and died. 

" It is the doctrine of the ' substitution > of 
Christ the Sinless One, to satisfy the laws the 
sinner has broken, that has done so much evil. 
It has lulled the wicked into a false security. 
The first thing they find when they come here is 
the record of their lives, and every man goes to 
the place he has made for himself, according as 
that life has been. . . . Absolute, impartial jus- 
tice is meted out to every man, of every clime and 
every race, for that justice is his own involuntary 
creation. However feeble have been the glim- 
merings of goodness and truth, here they are fos- 
tered and strengthened till they burn brightly for 
God. The ignorant are instructed, the weary 
are soothed, and the broken-hearted are com- 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 175 

forted. Gradually those who at first fled from 
the purity and brightness here, are brought in 
by the all-embracing love of God; and we who 
minister to these lost ones, rejoice on the birth 
of a soul into those higher regions of light and 
progress." 

Such is the At-one-ment; which brings about 
not only the Communion of Saints but unity with 
God and Christ, when man has repented of his 
sins. 

How will the Christian world receive this in- 
terpretation? My own experience is as follows: 
I published a book in 1884 entitled Christian 
Beliefs Reconsidered in the Light of Modern 
Thought, wherein I called attention to the mean- 
ing of the word " Atonement/' namely " Recon- 
ciliation" or At-one-ment. A clergyman for 
whom I had frequently preached, said I should 
" never enter his pulpit again." A Canon said 
in a sermon when I was present : " If I did not 
believe in ' substitution/ I would never preach 
again in this pulpit." I wrote an article on the 
subject in The Pulpit, and a correspondent wrote 
to say : "It may be right, but I am too old to 
change any views." Rev. Stainton Moses was 



176 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

right when he told Imperator that his teaching 
" would not be accepted." 

Mrs. Heslop received the following words from 
one who had read what her husband had said: 
" If the Lord Jesus Christ did not die as my sub- 
stitute, then J am for ever lost." 

Her reply to the friend, she tells us, was in- 
spired by her husband, and quotes it in full. 

She writes : " My former view was that the 
only way to the Father lay through the sacrificial 
work of Jesus Christ; that by his Death on the 
Cross He paid the penalty of my sins, and 
through faith in His sacrifice they were blotted 
out for ever. Christ having suffered in my stead, 
I was set free. This is the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment as preached in the Christian churches. 
Now it has been told me from the Christ-sphere 
that this is a mistaken view of the atoning work 
of Jesus Christ. . . . The great mission of Jesus 
was to show us our union with the Father, whose 
name is Love, and to make our at-one-ment with 
Him a realized fact." 

Mrs. Heslop adds the following to her hus- 
band's words from the other side : " Much of 
John's work is to welcome souls newly passed 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 177 

into the spirit-life. He tells me that many are 
filled with distress and perplexity when they 
are confronted by the sins of their past lives; 
they had thought all had been obliterated by 
their faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ, and he begs me to try and throw light on 
this doctrine. 

" I know there are many texts in the Bible 
which seem to confirm the evangelical view; but 
I am told that they allude to the ultimate cleans- 
ing after repentance and restitution, such com- 
pleting our reconciliation to God, and not to the 
total obliteration of a special sin by an act of 
faith." 

" It is right to dwell on the forgiveness of God 
to the contrite sinner, for this is a glorious truth ; 
but it is the consequences of sin that will con- 
front us when the veil of the flesh no longer hides 
them from our sight. But if they have been 
faced and the debt paid whilst on earth, our 
sins can no longer confront us in the Spirit- 
world, but are in very deed ' cast into the depths 
of the sea ' for ever." 

The question now arises, how has the Bible 
been misread so that many persons come to be- 



178 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

lieve in the so-called Atonement or the " Sub- 
stitution by Christ " instead of man suffering 
for his sins? 

If we go back to the beginning of things, we 
find the original meaning of sacrifice was to 
please and appease the deities, for all sorts of 
troubles and afflictions were thought to be due 
to them, as punishments for unknown crimes as 
well as known delinquencies. Thus we read 
after the flood Noah offered a sacrifice of sweet 
savour and Yahveh is said to have promised that 
for the future such a flood should not occur 
again. But this same story is found on the an- 
cient Babylonian tablets ; but in them it is poly- 
theistic, and not monotheistic as represented in 
Genesis. 

Similarly after the matter of Korah, Moses 
stayed the plague, called the " Wrath " of Yah- 
veh, by offering sweet-scented incense. 

We know that the idea of diseases, etc., were 
looked upon as inflicted by God, down to the 
time of Christ; for the Jews asked: "Who 
sinned, the man born blind or his father? " to 
account for it. Like Job of old, who protested 
against his friends arguing that he must have 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 179 

sinned to be so troubled, our Lord denounces the 
theory altogether. Ezekiel had long before 
strongly condemned the idea that any man should 
be held responsible for his son's misdemeanours 
or vice versa. Every one must stand or fall in 
accordance with his own doings, for which he 
alone is responsible. It is obvious, therefore, 
that this righteous law is violated if Christ died, 
as a man, instead of sinners having to bear their 
natural consequences. 

If we turn to the original Greek text of the 
New Testament, we find that it is never said that 
Our Lord died "instead of " (in Greek, anti) 
but always "on behalf of" (in Greek, huper) 
man; or "in the matter of" (peri) our sins. 
He died as all the subsequent martyrs did, for 
His Great Cause — the Salvation of Man from 
his sins; but how is this to be done? All 
through the Old Testament as also in the New, 
forgiveness of sins invariably follows immedi- 
ately on sincere repentance. Let us take an ex- 
ample from the Old Testament. The prophet 
Nathan reproves David for his sins of murder 
and taking Bathsheba. David's conscience is 
awakened and he cries : " O, God, against Thee 



180 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

only have I sinned." Nathan at once says: 
" The Lord hath put away thy sin." 

The publican in the temple prayed : " God, be 
merciful to me a sinner," and he left the temple 
" justified." This word obviously means here 
" forgiven " ; while the self-righteous Pharisee 
was not. David, the publican, the woman who 
bathed Our Lord's feet with her tears, Zacchaeus 
the exorbitant publican, and the thief on the 
cross were all similarly " justified " ; because 
Christ could read their hearts and knew that 
their repentance was sincere. 

All sinners, or as St. Paul calls them, " aliens " 
or " enemies," are " at two " with God ; but He 
would reconcile them unto Himself, and so be 
" at one," i. e.> in " union " with Himself. The 
only way by which it can be effected is by the 
sinner's own repentance and then living the 
Christ-life. God has endowed man with a free 
will. It is that which makes a man responsible 
for his own conduct. 

The doctrine of the Atonement leaves the man 
himself too much, if not altogether, out of the 
New Covenant. It gives him a false sense of se- 



DOCTBINE OF THE ATONEMENT 181 

curity if he looks to Christ's death as a " sub- 
stitution " for the effects of his own sins in this 
world. He will have a rude awakening on the 
other side : "Asa man sows, so shall he reap." 
God's laws are immutable and perfectly just; 
because whatever a man does consciously, 
whether good or bad, he regulates his own con- 
sequences upon himself. As stated, there will be 
no Judge hereafter; as Christ said : " All Judg- 
ment is in the Son," but the Son declines to 
judge, for He " came not to judge but to save." 
His " Word " is the judge, and that means His 
teaching; and if we choose to pay no heed, know- 
ingly going astray, our own conscience will judge, 
when it is too late to amend our way in this life. 

As many people still pin their faith; upon 
Christ as being a " substitute," it is perhaps de- 
sirable to add a few more words to expose the 
error. 

The late Mr. A. S. Lamb wrote a little book 
called Unbelief, the World's Greatest Bin, in 
which he discusses this false theory of salvation 
as if it were true. He says : " Justification 
means nothing short of this. It is far more than 



182 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

bare pardon. It is a making for all judicious 
purposes, before the heavenly tribunal, the un- 
just, just." 

But how was this to be effected? " To create 
a righteousness which could be imputed was the 
prime object, so far as we sinners are concerned, 
of Our Lord and Saviour's incarnation, His life 
of obedience, and His atoning death." ..." It 
is indeed true that for those who have, by God, 
through the Holy Spirit, been led to lay their 
sins on Jesus, and to put their trust for justifica- 
tion in God's sight solely on the great work com- 
pleted on Calvary, the eternal punishmeJit of sin 
has been actually and fully borne." 

This is all totally unscriptural and false ! 

" To lay our sins on Jesus," like the sentence, 
" He bore our iniquities," are simply metaphor- 
ical expressions based on the account of the scape- 
goat, when Moses laid his hands upon it, and 
sent it adrift into the desert. What on the other 
hand the whole Bible teaches is that sins are 
only forgiven on repentance. Yet Mr. Lamb as- 
serts : " Repentance of itself is no ground for 
reconciliation ! " 

If that were true, why did Our Lord say that 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 183 

the publican in the temple — after praying for 
forgiveness — went away " justified." To jus- 
tify and justification are legal terms making a 
man, as we say, " not guilty." It is a purely 
negative position. To be just requires a man to 
have done positive acts of justice, such as Zac- 
chaeus promised to do; thereby proving that his 
repentance was sincere. It is his own conduct 
alone that can make a man " just " or " right- 
eous." 

" As a sinner is ' justified ' from all things," 
writes Mr. Lamb, " through the obedience, suffer- 
ing and death of Christ as his substitute, and so 
delivered from the guilt and punishment due to 
his sin." ..." To create a righteousness which 
can be imputed was the prime object of our Lord 
and Saviour's incarnation. It was to work out 
the complete available satisfaction of the de- 
mands of eternal truth and justice that His 
obedience, suffering and death, as our substitute 
were indispensably necessary." 

This process is said to appease God and pro- 
pitiate His wrath. But God is Love and re- 
quires nothing of the sort, only man's repentance, 
then " He reconciles the sinner unto Himself." 



184 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

All the words italicized in Mr. Lamb's account 
have erroneous meanings; for example: 

Believe: There was no special word in Greek 
before Christ came, for " to have faith in " ; so 
the common word for " believe " 1 had to be taken 
over. The two meanings are well distinguished 
by St. James. He says : " What doth it profit, 
if a man say he hath faith (pistis), but have not 
works? " Will faith alone, i. e., mere " belief," 
save him? And he gives an illustration which 
the reader can refer to. In the 19th verse he 
uses the verb (pisteuo) in the old sense of "be- 
lieve " : " Thou believest that God is one God : 
Thou doest well: The devils also believe, but 
shudder." No one would impute to them any 
faith in Jesus Christ. 

Consequently it is not " belief " or " unbelief " 
that Mr. Lamb is writing about; for, belief is 
solely concerned with reason or " head-knowl- 
edge " ; whereas faith, not only includes this, but 
must prove itself by " heart-practice." 

Moreover, no man's goodness or badness can be 
" imputed " to another person ; for Mr. Lamb 

i This comes from the Latin credo, which stands for the 
Greek pisteuo. 



DOCTKINE OF THE ATONEMENT 185 

uses the word as if it meant " imparted," as lie 
speaks of Christ's righteousness as a " gift " to 
us. The word " impute " can only mean " laying 
to one's charge/' and in the case of a good man, 
regarding him as righteous. In either case the 
good or bad man must be proved by his works; 
as is done in a law court. 

Moreover, Ezekiel, long before, declared as a 
fundamental law of God, that no one could be 
punished for the iniquities of another, nor be 
righteous instead of another person. The idea of 
" substitution " is in defiance of God's word. 

St. Paul gives a very different explanation to 
that of Mr. Lamb : " God was in Christ recon- 
ciling the world unto Himself and not reckoning 
their trespasses unto them." Such reconcilia- 
tion was on one presupposed condition — that 
the world had repented. It is a self-acting law. 
Forgiveness follows in the wake of sincere re- 
pentance, and is proved by the sinner " turning 
away from his wickedness and doing that which 
is lawful and right " — and above all showing an 
enthusiasm in doing good to others — then " he 
shall save his soul alive." 

Salvation is nothing more or less than living 



186 KELIGION OF THE SPIBIT WOKLD 

the Christ life to the best of our ability on this 
earth. The Greek word soteria was well trans- 
lated in the Latin Vulgate by salus, i. e., spiritual 
" health " ; and the word was used till the twelfth 
century, when it began to be replaced by " salva- 
tion." It has been retained, however, in the Gen- 
eral Confession : " We have no health in us," 
and in the Baptismal Service. Christ came to 
save us from our sins, not from Gehenna; that 
is left for the sinner himself to do, by acquiring 
salvation, by working it out, though in fear and 
trembling. As the Kingdom of Heaven is within 
us, so may Hell be. 

The danger lurking in this theory, therefore, 
does not seem to be noticed by Mr. Lamb. He 
says : " Christ is the end of the law because 
He has satisfied the law, through His work fin- 
ished on Calvary. He has brought in a right- 
eousness which is now available for us, as a 
ground of justification, without a personal keep- 
ing of the law." 

But if the reader will carefully study Rom. 10, 
he will see that St. Paul is contrasting the Old 
Law with the New Covenant ; so that when Christ 
came to establish the latter He put an end to the 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 187 

old Scholastic system. The "righteousness of 
the Law " was obedience enforced or en- 
couraged by temporal punishments or rewards, 
respectively. He abolished this and substituted 
" Faith," that is a law written on the fleshy table 
of the heart and not on tables of stone, and the 
man is free to obey his own conscience and no 
longer a task-master. Mr. Lamb quite fails to 
realize this. 

" Redemption " — this and other expressions, 
such as " ransomed," " bought with a price," etc., 
are all metaphors taken from the Old Testament. 
No payment of any kind was made to any one; 
but we still use the phrase if a man " rescues " 
another from fire, but gets burnt, we say that he 
paid a heavy price for his noble action ; so when 
" God redeemed Israel from Pharaoh " the word 
only meant " rescued." No price was paid to 
the King of Egypt. 

St. Paul even uses the word translated " re- 
demption "as a synonym for another, for " for- 
giveness," both words in Greek, as stated is the 
riddance of sin. 1 

With regard to the word " Atonement," which 
i Eph., l, 7. 



188 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

now means "making amends for," it had only 
one in the 16th century, viz., to put " at one," 
i. e., " at-one-ment." It is frequent in Shake- 
speare's plays : thus Desdemona says : " I would 
that I could atone them," meaning make the 
Moor and Cassio friends again, or "at one." 
This sense of " making amends " or " expiation " 
is traceable to the Vulgate 1 ; then to Archbishop 
Anselm's book, Cur Deus Homo? (i. e., Why did 
God become man?) 2 and finally to Calvin; 3 
hence his followers who accept this erroneous 
teaching of Salvation are called Calvinists. 

If we search through the writings of the Apos- 
tolic Fathers of the first and following centuries 
we find no support for the theory of Substitution. 
They deal solely with Repentance and living a 
holy life as the essentials of a Christian, such as 
St. Clement, in the first and second century, calls 
" the Glorious and Venerable Rule of our Holy 
Calling. Let us consider what is Good and Ac- 
ceptable, and well pleasing in the sight of Him 
that made Us. Let us look steadfastly to the 

i Fourth Century. 

2 Twelfth Century. 

3 Sixteenth Century. The false meaning became general in 
books on religion about 1650. 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 189 

Blood of Christ, and see how Precious His Blood 
is in the sight of God; which being shed for our 
salvation has obtained the Grace of Kepentance 
for all the World . . . to all such as would tprn 
to him, Noah preached Repentance. Jonah de- 
nounced Destruction against the Ninevites. 
However, they repented of their Sins, and ap- 
peased God by their Prayers and were saved, 
though they were strangers to the Covenant of 
God." 

" Hence we find how all the ministers of the 
Grace of God have spoken by the Holy Spirit of 
Repentance. And even the Lord of all has Him- 
self declared with an oath concerning it : i As 
I live,' saith the Lord, 6 1 desire not the death of 
a sinner, but that he should repent.' He refers 
also to similar utterings of the Prophets. He 
continues by showing how our regeneration to 
holiness is the outcome of repentance." 

St. Clement knows nothing of Christ having 
been crucified as our " Substitute." He died at 
the end of the First Century, similarly is it with 
all the ablest of the Apostolic Fathers. 

What, then, does Our Lord's death upon the 
cross teach us? It is the great end and object 



190 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

of all His teaching, i. e., His " Word " — to lay 
down one's life if called upon to do so, on behalf 
of others. 

Self-sacrifice is the great law of Love, in Greek 
Agape, which means an enthusiasm for doing 
good to, and for, others. 

What is St. James' definition of the Christian 
Religion? 

" Pure Religion and undefiled before God our 
Father is this : To visit the fatherless and wid- 
ows in their affliction; and to keep himself un- 
spotted from the world." Such again is Agape 
or " Love." 

Our Lord does not turn to those whom He com- 
pared to the goats and say*, in the words of Mr. 
Lamb : " Believe on Me," because I have done 
" obedience," borne " suffering and death " as 
your " substitute," and so " delivered you from 
the guilt and eternal punishment due to your 
sins " ; and that I can " impute my righteous- 
ness " to you ; which you can " accept as a satis- 
faction for your sin " ; since " I have fulfilled and 
satisfied God's Law," etc. 

On the other hand, Our Lord's own words 
were : " Depart from me, ye cursed; into eternal 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 191 

fire, which is prepared for the devil and his an- 
gels." The reader can study this conclusion for 
himself. 

If the reader has read the former part of this 
parable of the Judgment, he will see what hap- 
pens to the " justified " who had made themselves 
righteous by living and doing what Christ did. 
They " go into eternal life." Such is the whole 
teaching of Jesus Christ, summed up in the two 
words " Faith " and " Love," or an Enthusiasm 
for doing good to others. This is the result of 
reconciliation to God, metaphorically expressed 
(by eating His flesh, that is, acquiring His char- 
acter, and by drinking His blood, that is, living 
His life on earth, and so in every way imitating 
His conduct. " Imitation " is what is meant by 
" Union " with Him and the Father. 

Let us once more turn to our greatest Exposi- 
tor of the meanings of ( words in St. John's 
Epistles. Dr. Westcott thus writes in his notes : 
"Man's estrangement from God by sin can be 
regarded in two ways. Sin cannot but be a bar 
to God's love; and, conversely, man as sinful can- 
not love God. He requires a change in condition, 
and a change in feeling." Propitiation [i. e., 



192 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Christ offers Himself to the sinner] and Recon- 
cilement [of the sinner to God]. . . . The Love 
of God [is seen] in the mission of His Son which 
calls out man's love, as St. John says : " Herein 
is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved 
us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation [i. e., to 
propitiate man] : for He is ' our propitiation/ 
He propitiates the sinner by offering up Himself, 
i. e. y His flesh and blood for the sinner to eat and 
drink." 

Dr. Westcott shows that both in the Greek 
Septuagint version of the old Hebrew Testament, 
as well as in the New Testament, the verb hilas- 
kesthai (to "propitiate") stands in remarkable 
contrast with the classical usage. . . . The Scrip- 
tural conception is not that of appeasing [i. e., 
" propitiating "] one who is angry against the 
offender, but of altering the character of that 
which occasions alienation [such of course being 
the sins of man] . Such phrases as " propitiat- 
ing " God or God being reconciled to man are 
foreign to the language of the New Testament. 
Man is reconciled to God. There is a propitia- 
tion of the sinner. The Love of God is the same 
throughout. 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 193 

As an illustration of the cluster of verbal er- 
rors involved in the popular misunderstanding of 
the so-called " Atonement/' I will refer to an 
event in the year 1858. In that year there was 
what was called a " Revival/' which spread more 
or less all over England. At all events it reached 
Suffolk, where I happened to know a certain 
curate of a country parish who was strongly in- 
fected by it. A description of his method of im- 
pressing " Salvation " upon the villagers was as 
follows — Taking his text: "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved" 
His address might be capitulated somewhat as 
follows : " Christ voluntarily submitted to be cru- 
cified on the Cross, i. e., in a vicarious manner, 
as a substitute in your stead, in order that — if 
you will only believe the words of the text to be 
true, you will be saved from Hell; because by 
His death He propitiated and appeased the 
Father's wrath, and satisfied His justice; i.e., 
by His bearing the penalty due, not only for your 
sins, but for the sins of the whole world." 

Were the theory true, one would expect to find 
some reference to it in Our Lord's Parables ; but 
there is not a trace. The late Rev. Prof. B. 



194 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Jowett thus writes : " The Parables have a nat- 
ural and ethical character, reading them simply 
and naturally we find in them no indication of 
the doctrine of atonement or satisfaction. There 
is no hint contained in them of that view of the 
death of Christ which is sometimes regarded as 
the centre of the Gospel. There is no difficulty 
'in the nature of things/ which prevents the 
father going out to meet the prodigal son (nor 
the Father forgiving a repentant sinner). No 
other condition is required of the justification of 
the publican except the true sense of his own 
unworthiness. The power of the Son of the Man 
to forgive sins is not dependent on the satisfac- 
tion which He is to offer for them." 

One can understand the meaning of Our Lord's 
self-sacrifice better if we contrast it with those 
under the Old Covenant. This was, so to say, 
external; whereas the New Covenant is internal; 
the one written on tables of stone, the other on 
the fleshy tablet of the heart. The sacrifices of 
old were irresponsible animals compelled to die 
as symbols under the idea of obeying the outward 
Laws of Yahweh under the aspect of propitiatory 
offerings to appease Him. 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 195 

Christ offers Himself as our propitiation, as He 
is our righteousness, i. e., a voluntary self-sacri- 
fice on behalf of the Great Cause — the Salvation 
of the world. He offers Himself — His flesh and 
blood — as a propitiation to man to come to eat 
and drink and be " at one " with Him and so save 
himself. The flesh of the victim in olden times 
was eaten by the people ; but the blood was sprin- 
kled upon them, i. e. y externally; but Christ's 
flesh and blood are (metaphorically) taken in- 
ternally. 

The spiritual meaning is that flesh stands for 
Character and blood for Life. 

As Yahweh pleaded with His chosen people, 
thus, for example, God says : " They who handle 
the law knew Me not; the rulers who trans- 
gressed against Me. . . . Wherefore I will yet 
plead with you saith the Lord." So, too, Christ 
pleads from His Cross, for He would draw the 
whole world nigh to Him. Though in Heaven 
He still pleads to man on earth against His op- 
ponent, Sin. His one offering once made is a 
perpetual propitiation to all the world for all 
time to come to His cross and be saved. 

As God pleaded with the Israelites, so does 



196 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Christ plead from the cross for all to " draw 
nigh " to Him and He continues to plead in the 
presence of God. 

To plead is not to ask for forgiveness, but a 
metaphorical expression for " arguing a case 
with an opponent " and Christ's opponent is 
" Sin." His once offering of Himself was an 
historical event which can never cease to have 
occurred. The Cross can go on pleading for 
ever. Hence the Covenant is completed and 
drawn out at length by the writer to the Hebrews 
who uses phrases only strictly applicable to the 
old sacrifices, but are metaphorically applied to 
Christ; and he concludes — using Isaiah's ex- 
pression : " So Christ, having once offered to 
bear the sins of man," meaning that He suffered 
not " instead of " but on behalf of man to induce 
him to repent, and so free himself from sins 
for ever. 

In one point the comparison cannot be made. 
To repent of his sins is not mentioned in the 
Pentateuch as a command for each individual 
among the Israelites. He was, so to say, lost 
in the nation. But now Christ's death appeals 
to every one of us individually. 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 197 

The fundamental error will now be clearly seen 
to be that the idea that Christ died instead of 
us is taken from the Old Testament victims. 
Whereas the responsibility now rests upon each 
individual man, who is answerable to his own 
conscience — a word unknown to the Old Testa- 
ment; though it occurs frequently in St. Paul's 
Epistles. . 

That Our Lord spoke metaphorically is obvious 
when we turn to the Gospel and read what He 
said to the Jews : " Except ye eat the flesh of 
the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no 
life in you." The Jews ridiculed the idea, ask- 
ing: "How can this man give] us his flesh to 
eat? " In reply to His disciples, Our Lord said : 
" It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh 
profiteth nothing. The Words that I speak 
unto you, they are spirit and they are life." 
— " He that hath faith in Me, hath everlasting 
life." 

Consequently, if His flesh symbolizes His 
Words, the bread when eaten symbolizes them 
too; but His words mean His teaching, and 
therefore to act up to His teaching is to prove 
our faith in His Words. Such produces our 



198 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Character, and St. Paul uses " flesh " to indi- 
cate it. 

Now the Church has read into the words " flesh 
and blood " what we may call " actuality," just 
as the Jews did, in that they are supposed to 
carry Our Lord's actual Spirit when applied to 
the bread and wine. So His Spirit is thought to 
be conveyed to the recipients of the Communion, 
and the consequence to be eternal life. 

Such is Mysticism, of which there is not a trace 
in either the Epistles of St. Paul or of other 
writers in the New Testament. 

As I have been discussing the view held in the 
Spirit-World with regard to the Atonement, I 
will here add what they have to say about the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; such, according 
to the Prayer of Consecration in our Prayer- 
Book, is closely connected with the Atonement; 
with details of which this prayer commences. 

Our own " domestic " spirits, as I call them, 
replied to my question : " How do you regard 
the Lord's Supper in your world? " The reply 
came at once : " We do not think anything 
about it." 

I asked Dr. Hooper, the well-known Medium, 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 199 

to whom I am greatly indebted — as the reader 
of my Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism will 
know — to enquire of the Spirit " Ajax," well 
known in his earth life as a celebrated preacher 
in Chicago. Ajax sent me a long reply, which 
was taken down in shorthand. I counted, 
roughly, 1,150 words in the transcript. It dealt 
with other kindred matters besides the Sacra- 
ment. 

With reference to the service, Ajax was brief, 
but he quite agrees with the previous communica- 
tion. He is very insistent upon the uselessness 
of all the ritual associated with it, more espe- 
cially in the Roman Church. 

The following is the portion which refers to my 
special question : " We have no such ceremony or 
anything analogous to it in the Spirit- World." 
" The ceremony of the Last Supper " was simply 
Christ's method of impressing upon the minds of 
the disciples the fact that He was leaving them, 
to fix it upon their minds, that this was the last 
occasion when He would be with them. He 
wishes it to be passed on from generation to gen- 
eration, that He should never be forgotten. 

Ajax, then, adds what others have said, that 



200 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the motive for partaking of the bread and wine 
lies in the symbol of union amongst all His fol- 
lowers, and he compares it with (e. g.) " The Red 
Indians, with whom there is -the custom of min- 
gling of blood by the opening of an artery in the 
left arm. The blood is mingled between the two 
and thus brotherhood is established to the end of 
all time." 

As a fact, the " cult " called Totemism of sav- 
ages, is now recognized as recorded in the Old 
Testament, representing the degradation from 
the religion of Jehovah. 

Ajax suggests that Our Lord would have had 
in His mind some such custom as that of eating 
bread and salt together, to indicate the Fellow- 
ship or Unity, which He wished to establish in 
His Church. 

St. Paul certainly saw it in this light, for he 
asks — evidently expecting the Corinthians to at 
once agree with him — " Is not the bread [loaf] a 
fellowship of Christ's body? Is not the wine a 
fellowship of Christ's blood? " 

The late Sir John Seeley well expresses this in 
his well-known work, Ecce Homo : " Christ did 
not regard it as possible to unite men to each 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 201 

other, but by first uniting them to Himself. And 
in the Lord's Supper, in which the union of 
Christians is symbolized, it is represented as de- 
pending, not merely on the natural passion of 
humanity implanted in their breasts, nor merely 
on the command of Christ calling that passion 
into activity, but upon a certain intimate per- 
sonal contact between Christ and His followers. 
The union of mankind, but a union begun and 
subsisting only in Christ, is what the Lord's Sup- 
per sacramentally expresses." 

" The ceremony," continues Ajax, " is pure rit- 
ual, as it is known and practised today. We 
claim no adherence to it whatever. Christ was 
trying to impress upon His disciples that He had 
chosen them, that He wished them to carry on 
with the work; and He received them into true 
Brotherhood, that they should not forget Him, as 
He was a part of them and they a part of Him- 
self." 

With regard to the ceremonial accessories, es- 
pecially in the Roman Church, Ajax adds : 

" Man will worship that which he does not un- 
derstand. He has worshipped and gone Sunday 
after Sunday to partake of the Holy Communion, 



202 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

which he does not understand. It is simply a 
Mystery created by the Churches^ and those who 
were interested in the subjection of mankind." 

A little analysis of the metaphorical meanings 
of Our Lord's words may make the above clear. 
The Bread (Loaf) represents the disciples, i. e., 
the Churchy while each portion eaten is an indi- 
vidual communicant, and also stands for Christ's 
Character to be acquired. 

The Wine represents His Bloody i. e. y His Life. 
The New Covenant is kept by living the Christ- 
life. So no one is a perfect Christian who does 
not try his utmost to live the Christ-life. 

It was the last occasion when Christ would eat 
the Passover and close the Old Covenant. It was 
a type of the " end of the Law," and also of the 
beginning of the New. So, He added, " I will no 
more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that 
day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of 
Heaven." 

In saying this He seems to contrast the life un- 
der the Old Covenant with that under the New 
Covenant, i. e. y the Law is now in the heart, and 
not on tables of stone. 

" During this Whitsun week [1919], just think 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 203 

of the Churches and Cathedrals, and everything 
that appertains thereto, of the different vest- 
ments that will be worn, the various ceremonies 
that will be performed. Does the priest make 
himself a mimic of the stage, or is he a true man, 
a member of the Brotherhood, of the Fatherhood 
of God, and of Righteousness, both in Soul and 
Spirit upon earth? 

" These latter are the things which we ask you 
on earth to look well at. Think not of the ritual, 
think of the * natural life.' You can do very 
well without the ' unnatural ' things of ritual. 
Look at the natural man and woman. Look at 
them that are starving, the fatherless and moth- 
erless, at the halt and the blind. Worship, but 
help humanity, and think not of ceremonies that 
are performed by the clergy to strike fear into 
the hearts of humanity." 

It will be noticed that Ajax uses the word 
" Mystery." It also occurs in our Communion 
Service. What does it mean, and how can the 
term be applied to this or other sacraments? 

The mystical interpretation of the Lord's Sup- 
per arose about the 2nd or 3rd century, when the 
" theologists " of the day could not distinguish 



204 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

between a metaphor and a supposed reality. 
Thus, when Christ said : " This is My body/' and 
" This cup is the New Covenant in My blood," 
they thought He meant that He Himself was in 
the bread and in the wine, in some miraculously 
infused way, so that by our eating and drinking, 
the bread and wine could nourish our body and 
soul spiritually j and so " preserve us unto ever- 
lasting life," as stated by the priest to each 
communicant in our service. 

" Let us look at what the Atonement means. 
The man in the street seems to think that some 
one, the gentle Nazarene, laid down His life and 
paid the penalty for all sins before He came into 
the world and since. We from the spirit side of 
life say that it is not true. No x>ne has been 
enabled to pay the debt of your personal responsi- 
bility, and if a man commits a crime or a sin and 
thinks that at some future date he can gain for- 
giveness by laying his sin or his crime upon the 
shoulders of an innocent individual, then his 
crime is doubled. 

"We have watched the death-beds of many 
thousands of individuals as they have passed over 
to this side of life, from the child in the cradle to 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 205 

the old man that is decrepit — the man that dies 
of senile decay, the man that has lived through 
the whole gamut of human suffering, of human 
happiness and human turmoil. We have seen 
and we know. 

" If we examine closely into the subject we 
find the Atonement is held by him or her that 
blindly believes. But we say that faith without 
works is of no avail in the Spirit World. If a 
man believes that he will be enabled to gain the 
Kingdom of Heaven after living a life here of sor- 
did crime by a death-bed repentance, then we say 
that it is not true, for he must l work out his own 
salvation ' in the Spirit World. Those whom he 
has wronged, those to whom he has brought suf- 
fering and tears, must be approached and forgive- 
ness obtained from them before he is enabled to 
climb the Ladder of Progress in the Spirit 
Realms. We would rather take the word as ' At- 
one-ment.' With what? With the ideal state, 
the ideal life, what the gentle Nazarene of old de- 
scribed ' to be your brother's keeper,' ' to do unto 
others as you would be done by,' to be honest, to 
be just, to be at one with God, or to be at one with 
your conscience, which is the same thing. Some 



206 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

peoples' consciences are made of elastic, it 
stretches very much indeed. What is wrong to 
one is right to another. It is according to the 
cranial development of the individual, therefore 
there can be no one law whereby all humanity can 
be judged. As I have explained to you in days 
gone by, if a child is totally devoid of melody or 
harmony or the organ of sound, then it is almost 
impossible to teach that child music. If a child 
is devoid of the organ of colour and like organs in 
the brain, which would enable him to limn upon 
canvas beautiful pictures, it is almost a total fail- 
ure to strive to teach that child to paint or to 
draw. You would not punish him because he 
could not draw or play music, for the simple rea- 
son that child is devoid of the sense and of the 
organs of the material body that would enable 
him to draw or paint or to play beautiful music. 
It is the same with a man or woman who has a 
flat-topped head. You will find that the German 
people were at one time called ' flat-heads ' for 
the simple reason that they have no moral pro- 
pensities. They have been brought up in mate- 
rialism to look upon Force and the Sword as all- 
powerful. If a man or woman is deficient in the 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 20T 

moral organs, undoubtedly they will go astray, 
according to the light of the other people upon 
earth who are endowed or gifted with moral pro- 
pensities. 

" Another individual has the spiritual propen- 
sities largely developed, they love their Church 
or their Chapel, they revel in such things, whilst 
he who has a flat-topped head and whose reason- 
ing faculties are largely developed, cannot be- 
lieve because his reason will not allow him. He 
cannot sense things that are spiritual, of the spir- 
itual world, and those vibrations that are for ever 
vibrating around him. He knows nothing of 
them, he can only deal with material matters. 
He has nothing of the spiritual within his com- 
position. 

" What of the Atonement for that individual? 
The man that cannot believe, that cannot follow 
the traditions that others have followed? That 
by some magical process he will be saved and be 
made into an angel in the Spirit World? We 
know of no such process by which poor frail hu- 
manity can be made into angels or archangels. 
Each one of you is a man or woman with the feel- 
ings of men and women, with the attributes of 



208 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

goodness, of courage, of moral vision. Each man 
and woman is simply made np of just a little 
good and just a little evil, and we believe and 
fully hope and trust that the good is in the as- 
cendency. The cry of the widow and orphans 
means nothing to the man who has hoarded 
wealth and who has gained it, never mind how. 
He didn't care as long as the wealth was his, so 
long as his bank account was swelled : while that 
man lived, it mattered nothing to him if the 
Atonement were true. On his death-bed he 
would have to give everything up and it would 
not be fair for him to be able to enter the King- 
dom of Heaven without paying the penalty of 
the wrongs he had done or left undone. That 
man was never spiritually at one with himself 
and could not be at one with God, at one with the 
spiritual world, or with his own conscience. He 
had to live a life of feverish activity for the sim- 
ple reason he must forget. He dare not dwell on 
that which is within his heart. 

" There is no efficacy in the Atonement. Man 
builds his life here moment by moment, hour by 
hour, day by day. Man must of necessity work 
out his own salvation here. He has committed 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 209 

some crime and he is punished and his conscience 
is purged of the crime. Then he will not suffer 
in the Spiritual Realms if he has gained full par- 
don from those individuals that he had wronged 
whilst upon Earth. 

" Let us examine life as it is presented to us. 
During the first seven years of childhood, the 
child spends quite half of its time in sleep, and it 
is almost impossible, or the child is incapable, 
of committing any crime. The next seven years 
the child is learning day by day. He may do 
wrong, little things, that do not attain to any im- 
mensity. You must understand this, that the 
growing child is suffering from hereditary ten- 
dencies and the environment in which he is 
placed. There are the sins of the fathers and 
the mothers. The child has taken after a vicious 
father or a vicious mother. He may be the vic- 
tim of hereditary tendencies and environment 
and it is impossible for him to live a clean, right- 
eous and pure life. In the next decade, develop- 
ment is taking place more rapidly. Manhood or 
womanhood begins to spring forth. Again at 
least a third of the time is spent in sleep so that 
there is not much time for the youth or the 



210 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

maiden to commit crime. Then perchance at the 
next decade, marriage takes place, home-ties are 
there for them either to make or to mar. Pos- 
sibly the young man and the maiden are full of 
the responsibilities of the upbringing of children 
and attending to the career and worries of do- 
mestic life and even then a third of the time is 
spent in sleep. We go right through until a 
man or woman attains the sixtieth year, when 
the forces of humanity begin to wane, when 
thought becomes more apparent to the individ- 
ual. They begin to think and to delve and to 
look back and realize, to be sorry for the wrongs 
that they have committed. They begin re-living 
their lives once again, purging themselves of 
their sins and then step by step, day by day, tot- 
tering onwards to the grave. Poor Humanity is 
beset with frailties. Poor Humanity was born 
not a perfect Being, but with environments and 
conditions and vibrations around th^m that only 
a saint could live through and not be smirched 
with sin. 

" But what is Sin and what is right and what 
is wrong? What to one is wrong, is right to an- 
other. No two individuals hold the same ideal 



DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT 211 

regarding right and wrong. They are the vic- 
tims of circumstances, of the hereditary tenden- 
cies, of the environment in which they lived in 
their younger days. Then Death claims them. 

" People who have been members of some 
church or chapel, possibly of the Salvation Army, 
may be narrow-minded, they may be Brothers in 
Christ, or belonging to the Church of Christ, and 
they may fully believe that no one except them- 
selves will be saved ; although they may have com- 
mitted sins, they are righteous in their own esti- 
mation, but are they more righteous than the 
others of God's children? They find that when 
they pass or emerge into the Spirit World, that 
the Atonement avails them nothing, that it has 
been just a blind belief. But if their conception 
of the Atonement has been lived up to, if it has 
enabled them to live a better and nobler life, bet- 
ter men and women, mothers and fathers, and 
better citizens, then it has helped them through 
this Mother Earth. 

" But if it has only been a belief, if they have 
committed crimes or wrongs, or if they have 
robbed their fellow men and women, in the belief 
that at some future day they will be able to ob- 



212 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

tain forgiveness and be saved, then indeed they 
are mistaken. When they emerge into the Spirit 
World, and they stand alone and recall the whole 
of their past lives, they become as it were coun- 
sel for the prosecution and for the defence, and 
judge and jury combined, and they see every- 
thing as it is. Possibly that is what Christ 
meant when He said that every deed was entered 
in the Book of Life, in the Book of Judgment. 
That is your conscience, your memory, that has 
lived and will live again in the Spiritual world. 
There you will be happy or unhappy, contented 
or discontented, and you will be drafted to that 
place or that sphere in the Spirit World that you 
are most fitted to live in, according to your life 
and according to your doings here upon Earth." 
[Ajax.] 



CHAPTER XII 

THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE — A TERRIBLE WARNING 

Cheiro saves a would-be suicide. — Mr. Leon Denis' de 
scription received from the other side. — Imperator's homily 
on the suicide of a friend of Rev. Stainton Moses. — The 
suicide of three College Tutors known to the present writer. 
— The record of B. Peruzzi de Medici. — Swedenborg's ex- 
periences. — The female suicide who controlled Olwen, the 
Welsh medium. — Vice Admiral W. Osborn Moore's infor- 
mation on the subject. — Chinese belief of the fate of sui- 
cides. — Jessie Adelaide's story. — The Salvation Army's 
Anti-suicide Bureau and its work. 

Cheiro, in his Memoirs, devotes a chapter to " A 
Spiritualistic Seance and its Sequel." He tells 
of a gentleman, aged about 60, who had wanted 
for close on twenty years to marry the one woman 
he had ever cared for. He was a doctor, a splen- 
did noble-hearted man, but a rank Materialist. 
After the death of the lady's husband he married 
her ; but in ten days she died. " There are no 
words to describe the state of grief into which 
this man was plunged ; he had no religion to go 
to for consolation, he had no God to plead with 

213 



214 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

that they might meet again — nothing, nothing 
but the most absolute despair." x He soon con- 
templated suicide. 

Cheiro happened to pass, with him, the house 
of a friend who was a medium. " I said to the 
doctor, Come with me for a moment, we are pass- 
ing the house of a man who I know to be an hon- 
est medium, and think how happy you would be 
if you could get even the slightest courage from 
Anna. 

" The medium was soon entranced — then fol- 
lowed a seance I shall never forget. In less than 
five minutes the doctor was holding a clear and 
distinct conversation with his wife. There was 
no mistaking her voice. The medium's face even 
became like hers, for she had a peculiar droop in 
the left side of the upper lip, and this was the 
first thing my friend noticed. 2 

" Clearly and distinctly she told him that he 
must not commit suicide, for she said : ' You will 
retard our meeting still more.' His life was to 
be used in work for others, she pleaded, until the 

i Op. cit., p. 125. 

2 I have myself observed the same fact ; when different con- 
trols come, the face of the medium assumes appearances totally 
unlike his own characteristics accordingly. 



THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE 215 

moment came when death would release him nat- 
urally. 

" I will only add that if Spiritualism never did 
more, it had at least brought peace to one man's 
heart, and during the two years he laboured aft- 
erwards, many hundreds of human beings re- 
ceived the benefit. " 

M. Leon Denis says in his work: Here and 
Hereafter, containing the record of Spirit-com- 
munications : " The fate of the self -destroyer has 
much in common with that of the criminal ; some- 
times it is even worse. To commit suicide is a 
cowardly act, a crime of which the consequences 
are terrible. To borrow the expression of a 
spirit, he who commits suicide evades suffering 
only to encounter torture. Each of us has duties 
and a mission to fulfil on earth ; trials to endure 
for our own good and improvement. To seek to 
evade these and to liberate ourselves before our 
time from human sufferings is to violate natural 
law; and every violation of natural law brings 
down a terrible reaction upon the violator. Sui- 
cide is not a way out of physical suffering. The 
spirit remains bound to the carnal body which it 
thought to destroy; slowly it suffers from every 



216 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

phase of decomposition, and its painfnl sensa- 
tions are multiplied rather than diminished." 

A friend of Rev. Stainton Moses had committed 
suicide, about whom Imp er at or has much to say. 
The following is part of his discourse. "We 
would speak with you of your friend. How 
should he be blest? He lifted sacrilegious hands 
against the shrine in which the All- Wise had 
placed his spirit for its progress and develop- 
ment. He wasted opportunities and destroyed, 
so far as he was able, the temple in which dwelt 
the Divine spark, which was his portion. He 
sent forth his spirit alone and friendless into a 
strange world where no place was yet prepared 
for it. He impiously flew in the face of the 
Great Father. How should he be blest? Im- 
pious, disobedient, wilful in his death, heedless, 
idle, selfish in his life, and yet more selfish in 
bringing pain and sorrow on his earthly friends 
by his untimely death — how should he find rest? 
Miserable, blind and undeveloped, there is no rest 
for such as he, till repentance has had its place 
and remorse leads to regeneration. 

"It is not necessary to go through in detail 
the story of that wasted life. Its spirit was 



THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE 217 

eaten out with cruel selfishness, and its end was 
destruction of self-consciousness. 

" That spirit which neglects to use its powers, 
which acts not, but morbidly dwells on fancied 
ills or suffering, assuredly breeds in itself dis- 
ease. The law of existence is work — for God, 
for brethren, for self ; not for one alone, but for 
all. Transgress that law and evil must come. 
The stagnant life becomes corrupt. . . . 

" When the cord of earth life was severed, the 
spirit found itself in darkness and distress. For 
long it was unable to sever itself from the body. 
It hovered round it, even after the grave had 
closed over the shrine which it had violated. It 
found no rest, no welcome in the world to which 
it had come unbidden. Darkness surrounded it, 
and through the gloom dimly flitted the forms of 
congenial spirits who had made shipwrecks of 
themselves, and were in unrestful isolation. 

" It was not till the first shudder of awakening 
conscience attracted the ministering spirits, that 
anything could be done to palliate the misery, not 
yet half felt or acknowledged, or to minister heal- 
ing to the soul. When it stirred amid the dark- 
ness, the ministers drew near and strove tq 



218 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

quicken the seared conscience and to awaken re- 
morse. For long after their efforts availed little, 
but by degrees they succeeded in awakening some 
measure of consciousness of sin, and the spirit 
began to grope blindly for some means of escape 
from a state which had become loathsome to it. 
Frequent relapses dragged it back. . . . 

" The hope for the spirit is that it may be 
nerved to occupy itself with some beneficent work 
and so to work out its own salvation. To this 
end it must journey on through remorse and un- 
congenial labour; for by no other means can it 
be purified. Selfishness must be eradicated by 
self-sacrifice. Idleness must be rooted out by la- 
borious toil. The spirit must be purified by suf- 
fering. 

" Such help as the ministers can give will not 
be withholden. It is their glorious mission to 
help on the aspiring, and to cheer the fainting" 
soul. But, though they may comfort, they can- 
not save one pang, nor palliate by one jot the pen- 
alty of transgression. No vicarious store of 
merit can avail ; no friend may bear the burden or 
lift it from the weary back. It must be borne by 
the soul that sinned, though helps and aids be 



THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE 219 

given to strengthen and support the failing ener- 
gies." 

In the case of three friends of the writer, all 
tutors of colleges, who committed suicide, their 
life was different. They did their work well, 
were clever men, took high degrees and became 
lecturers and teachers ; but from one cause or an- 
other they left their rooms in college to live in 
the country. Their occupation had gone. It 
appears to have been this which unhinged their 
minds. Nature called for the usual mental 
work; which no longer existed. The "auto- 
matic " part of the brain ceased to work. The 
result, suicide. 1 " A natural law was violated." 

Another writer, Miss M. C. Ffloulkes in My 
Own Past, says : " The Ex-crown Princess of 
Saxony told me at a ' sitting ' with Signor Tos- 
elli (the medium) that 'the earth-bound spirit' 
of her ill-fated lover, B. Peruzzi de Medici, had 
informed her that he was suffering torments of 

i A parallel from animal life will illustrate this. I once had 
a linnet in a nursery, taught to draw up its water which hung 
in a little bucket outside the cage. The maid somehow broke 
the string, and to save trouble, put the bucket inside the cage. 
The linnet refused to drink out of it, moped, and in three days 
died. Previously it had been perfectly well and singing reg- 
ularly. 



220 RELIGION OF THE SPIEIT WORLD 

punishment for his act of self-destruction, as 
his spirit was forced to remain in company with 
his decaying body and to witness all the attend- 
ant horrors of corruption." 1 

Swedenborg corroborates this result : " The 
spirit of a suicide came to me . . . holding a 
knife in his hand, as though he would plunge it 
into his breast ; but with which he strove hard as 
if wishing rather to cast it from him, but in vain. 
For what happens in the hour of death remains a 
long time before it vanishes away, as was told 
me." 2 

In Spirit Psychometry 3 will be found the ac- 
count of a female (who controlled the medium, 
Olwen) : she had committed suicide three or 
four years previously. Mr. Jaybee — who took 
down in English everything this Welshwoman 
said in her trances (for she could not speak a 
word of English), observed: "She fell into a 
trance and was thrown into a terrible state of 
commotion, wailing terribly and almost scream- 
ing. Half a yell was given two or three times. 

i Op. cit., p. 274. 

2 Spiritual Diary, pp. 336-7 ; On Suicides. 

s Op. cit., p. 96. 



THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE 221 

Then would follow some gurgling in the throat 
which appeared to have prevented her yelling. 
At this juncture one could imagine by the gur- 
gling noise that the breath had some large exit 
other than through the mouth or nostrils, etc." 

Mr. Jaybee was not aware at the time that the 
woman had cut her own throat. This fact was 
subsequently learnt from Little Dora, the black 
control, who supplied details which were all sub- 
sequently verified. 

It would appear, as she had entered and con- 
trolled Olwen, that the period during which she 
would have presumably remained united to her 
own body, about three years, had by no means 
passed. 

Vice-Admiral W. Osborne Moore mentions 
three cases of Suicides in Glimpses of the Next 
State : In the first he asks the question of a con- 
trol : " What is the spiritual fate of the sui- 
cide? " The reply was: "Their fate must be 
worked out in this phase or the next. Trouble 
can only be overcome by endurance. You can 
never escape the Law of Consequences. . . . One 
Soul must work out the evil of each life in its suc- 
cessive phases." 



222 EELIGION OF THE SPIKIT WOBLD 

The next reference was to one who had been on 
the same ship with the Admiral himself twenty 
years previously and had shot himself in his 
cabin, because as the man said : " I was impelled 
to do it." (A groan.) " Admiral, she would 
not marry me, as I had not enough money; and 
there was a richer man than I in the back- 
ground." (A groan.) 

The third case was that of a mother who had 
killed herself and her three children. 1 

The following occurred at one of many seances 
especially organized for helping those who had 
just passed over in great distress, to realize their 
position. The Spirit's agony is expressed in the 
first word she uttered : 

" What have I done? Oh, my God ! Oh, look 
at my dear ones ! Oh ! God ! Oh ! Why did I 
do it? Oh, baby ! baby ! baby ! But what was I 
to do? Oh! I wish I had begged; but oh! the 
pride of my heart. It was so hard ! If I could 
only rest — rest — " 

Mr. B : " You will find rest soon, and find your 
little ones. Your little ones are now happy." 

Spirit : " Oh ! Sir, I didn't want to do it. I 

i Hid., p. 545. 



THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE 223 

did it because I loved them so ! I loved them so ! 
Oh ! you all feel that I am bad." 

Mr. B : "Oh no, we feel sorry for you. We 
feel you made a mistake, but you didn't do it in- 
tentionally. You were partially out of your 
mind through trouble." 

Spirit : " Oh, I was most crazy, I could not see 
them starve," * etc. 

1 quote this fragment to give the reader an idea 
of how much sympathy can be given to such poor 
souls. 

A view somewhat parallel to the above state- 
ment is held by the Chinese. The authoress of a 
work entitled Two Years in the Forbidden City 2 
writes : " It is believed by the Chinese that when 
a person commits suicide their spirit remains in 
the neighbourhood until such time as they can 
entice somebody else to commit suicide; when 
they are free to go to another world, and not be- 
fore." 

It will not be out of place to quote a confes- 
sion of a would-be suicide from one of the Salva- 
tion Army's books entitled The Salvation Army 

i Op. cit., p. 545. 

2 By Princess Der Ling, p. 309. 



224 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Officer at Work. The chapter has this interest- 
ing Heading : 

THE SALVATION ARMY OFFICER 

AS 

LIFE-REPAIRER. 

Life-repairing Done Here. 
Broken Life-springs Adjusted. Vanished Hope Re- 
covered. Shattered Faith Rebuilt. 
Lost Ideals Restored. 

The Anti-Suicide Bureau has saved thousands 
of intentional suicides; an account of some of 
which are given. The " patients " were prom- 
ised: (1) — Inviolable secrecy; (2) — Consul- 
tation and advice free; (3) — No guaranteed 
financial help. 

One case — that of Rudolf Schultz, he per- 
mitted his name to be published. " He had been 
a graduated pharmacist; so that he was always 
able to get morphine by writing a prescription 
and presenting it at a drug store. He had sunk 
very low, and tried to commit suicide. A letter 
from him in an American paper tells the rest." 

" To The Star. Seeing a few lines in your last 
evening's edition concerning a man named K. 
Schultz, who tried to commit suicide by taking 
63 grains of morphine and failed, I wish to state, 



THE FATE OF THE SUICIDE 225 

I am the person. For years I have been addicted 
to the worst curse that humanity has ever known 
— i. e., the morphine and cocaine habit. 

" In my despair I went to the Salvation Army 

Anti-Suicide Bureau, and told Colonel my 

troubles, and ah ! what a great-hearted friend this 
gentleman is ! 

" We went down on our knees and prayed ; he 
encouraged me and uplifted me. I was filthy 
and ragged. He cleaned me personally, clothed 
me, supplied me with a room in their Headquar- 
ters, gave me good and substantial food and 
called a doctor who is attending me twice daily. 
Oh ! how much he has done and is still doing for 
me ! I was an outcast — a homeless, friendless 
stranger — and he uplifted me from the verge of 
death, and gave me new life and hope. More 
than a dozen times a day he comes up to my room 
and encourages me, and gives me little tokens of 
kindness. . . . 

" Next week I am going to the Fresh- Air 
Camp ; and it is my greatest desire that the pub- 
lic shall know what these Salvation Army people 
are doing for the poor and unfortunate. 
" Yours respectfully, KUDOLF SCHULTZ." 



CHAPTER XIII 

A FUTURE ANNIHILATION POSSIBLE, BUT SELF- 
WEOUGHT 

Mr. Emmet's interpretation of " Destruction." — Spiritu- 
alism supports the view of a possible annihilation. — The 
Greek word olethros and others imply "total destruction." 
— Preb. C. A. Row, on this meaning, as contrary to the 
ideas of "everlasting torment." — Texts in support of the 
truth that it depends upon man's free-will. — Dr. Gore 
also writes on annihilation with no everlasting torment. — 
Dr. Streeter's description of the future, quite confirmed by 
the Spirits, in allusion to the joys of a future life, of which 
the determinately wicked deprive themselves for ever. — 
Dr. Alf ord's interpretation of the " Second Death." 

The Rev. C. W. Emmet, B.D., comes to the con- 
clusion that the alternative result to everlasting 
punishment is a natural process of annihilation 
of the soul with an incorrigible, wilful persist- 
ence in evil. His words are : " There might be a 
difference of opinion as to the existence of any 
who could be regarded as irremediably bad; but 
it would be agreed, that if there were such, some 
form of annihilation was the only end which 
could be conceived for them." x 

i Essay on The Bible and Hell in Immortality, p. 171. Mao- 
Millan.) 

226 



FUTURE ANNIHILATION POSSIBLE 227 

He also refers to J Thess., 5, 3, and II Thess., 1. 
6, n\, and observes : " These passages suggest an- 
nihilation rather than indefinite torment." 

On the other hand : " So long as there is the 
faintest spark of the divine life in the soul, there 
remains the possibility of better things, and the 
love of God has something on which to work. 
We dare not abandon the hope of progress and 
forgiveness after death for such a soul. Only 
where the Spirit is definitely quenched will the 
soul cease to be." 

Mr. Emmet adds in a note : " This is not quite 
the doctrine of ' conditional immortality/ That 
says the Soul is not immortal till it has won eter- 
nal life; this says it is immortal till it has for- 
feited its boon, by an extreme of wilful sin. 
More and more we see that it is goodness which 
is essentially immortal and there is no serious 
philosophical difficulty in believing in the disso- 
lution of the completely bad personality." 

This view is thoroughly in keeping with the ex- 
perienced truths of Spiritualism. The very fact 
that good and bad spirits can and do communi- 
cate with us, as well as our own relations, and fa- 
miliar friends, is a practical proof of immortal- 



228 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

it j ; while the deduction of annihilation by " self- 
caused spiritual atrophy " or something akin to 
it, is a natural assumption by analogy as well as 
being in accordance with direct information on 
the subject from the other side. Thus a spirit 
told me : " They gradually disappear, and we do 
not know what becomes of them," i. e. } the wil- 
fully impenitent. 

The late Preb. C. A. Row discusses the ques- 
tion, explaining the several Greek words which 
imply " destruction " in an absolute sense, as 
signifying the annihilation of Man's soul, and 
not a continuous suffering of some punishment. 
For example: "He that loveth his life {i.e., 
soul) shall lose it [literally "destroy " it] ; but 
he that hateth life [soul] in this world, shall keep 
it into age-long life." On this he remarks : " The 
Greek-speaking Christian would understand by 
the word ' lose ' the ordinary idea denoted by the 
term < destroy ' ; and the word would wholly fail 
to convey to him that of any existence in never- 
ending torment, without some previous intima- 
tion that such was its intended meaning." 

Again : " The word of the cross is to them that 
are perishing, foolishness " (7 Cor., 1, 18) . Here 



FUTURE ANNIHILATION POSSIBLE 229 

the words evidently denote an act not yet com- 
pleted; and as far as the words are concerned, 
one which may be of long or short duration, but 
which will ultimately terminate in destruction. 

Prebendary Row concludes the chapter as fol- 
lows : " The general idea which the passages 
(quoted and others) are calculated to suggest to 
the mind of the reader, may be well expressed in 
the words of the author of the Epistle to the He- 
brews : 6 It is a fearful thing to fall into the 
hands of the living God ! ' For aught we know, 
sin wilfully persisted in, i. e., by evil become in- 
herent and irremediable, which resists every 
means of cure consistent with the preservation of 
free agency, in a moral being, may bring about 
the destruction of the sinner in the course of 
God's ordinary government of the moral and 
spiritual world, without the necessity of any spe- 
cial intervention on His part; just as disease 
brings about the destruction of the body under 
God's ordinary government of the natural 
world." 

A few texts may illustrate that God would 
have all men to be saved, but that they can 
" quench the spirit " and refuse its influence. 



230 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

" We have our hope set on the Living God ; 
Who is the Saviour of all men ; especially of them 
that believe.' 7 That is, He offers Himself to all, 
but they may reject the offer. 

" Denying ungodliness. . . . And worldly lust, 
we should live soberly and righteously and godly 
in this present world." 

" Have I pleasure in the death of the wicked? 
Saith the Lord God; and not that he should re- 
turn from his way and live," i. e., of his own free 
will. 

" I have no pleasure in the death of him that 
dieth, wherefore turn yourselves." 

" When the wicked man turneth away from his 
wickedness, etc." 

Man's free will decides which he will do. 

The Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Gore, has arrived 
at the same conclusion : " I do not think ... we 
are absolutely shut up into the almost intolerable 
belief in never ending conscious torment for the 
lost. . . . Final moral ruin may involve, I can- 
not but think, such a dissolution of personality as 
carries with it the cessation of personal con- 
sciousness. In this way the final ruin of irre- 
trievably lost spirits, awful as it is to contem- 



FUTUEE ANNIHILATION POSSIBLE 231 

plate, may be found consistent with St. Paul's 
anticipation of a universe in which ultimately 
God is to be all in all — which does not seem to 
be really compatible with the existence of a re- 
gion of everlastingly tormented and rebellious 
spirits." 

The final result, therefore, depends upon Free 
will alone : " The general teaching of the New 
Testament appears to be that, on the one hand, 
the choice between good and evil in this world is 
one which involves abiding consequences extend- 
ing far beyond the limits of this life ; but, on the 
other hand, there is no clear evidence that any of 
the writers contemplated for the sinner an unend- 
ing existence in a state of torment and rebellion 
against God." 

The Greek word (Olethros), therefore, pre- 
cludes the idea that all, without exception, might 
be finally saved. When Christ said : " If I be 
lifted up, I will draw all men to Myself," He 
could only mean, " provided they consent to be 
drawn." For we know He could not draw the 
rulers of Israel, who crucified Him, and perse- 
cuted His followers afterwards. 

Salvation, I repeat, depends upon man's free 



232 KELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

will, and he must work it out himself, though it 
may be in fear and trembling. 

Of our prospects of activities in the world to 
come, an eminent writer says : " I would empha- 
size (the belief) that the life of God must not 
only be said to be, but actually imagined as some- 
thing fuller, richer, and more alive, as something 
more concrete, not less so, than the life of man ; 
and that the life of Heaven must be thought of as 
more, not less, teeming with varied content than 
that of earth. Life here would be intolerable 
without variety, and the life of a world which is 
better than this, would have in it more, and not 
less, variety, than that of this world." 

Dr. Streeter may like to know that what he 
says in the preceding paragraph represents what 
Spirits are constantly assuring us is the case. It 
is from this, which the Suicide and (at least tem- 
porarily) the determinately wicked, voluntarily 
exclude themselves, if they utterly refuse to re- 
pent, and annihilation is the inevitable and nat- 
ural result. 

With regard to the Second Death mentioned in 
Revelations, Dr. Alford observes : " As those in a 
second and higher life, so those also in a second 



FUTURE ANNIHILATION POSSIBLE 233 

and deeper death. And as after that life there 
is no more death, so after that death there is no 
more life." 

We might, perhaps, make a comparison ; as the 
present body perishes if it be not fed with bread, 
so the spiritual body and soul, if not fed with the 
Bread of Life, perish for ever. 



CHAPTEE XIV 

SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE, E. G., THE WITCH OF 
ENDOR, AND THE HOLY SEANCE ON THE DAY 
OF PENTECOST 

Saul's visit to the Witch of Endor. — The features iden- 
tical with present-day spiritualism. — The Day of Pente- 
cost, the phenomena described, of frequent occurrence in 
present-day seances : e. g., Wind, " tongues of fire," con- 
trolling by spirits, etc. — Corroborations by other writers. 

— Similar phenomena, recorded in the Old Testament. — 
Dr. Hooper's experiences of physical phenomena at seances. 

— The source of the wind — spirit lights a common-feature, 
described by other observers — they can move intelligently, 
implying the presence of an unseen spirit indicated by 
them; hence they can enter and control the sitters. — Dr. 
Hooper's remarks on the Day of Pentecost. — A communi- 
cation from Ajax on the phenomena. — Spiritual Healing, 
Dr. Hooper's power of, and experiences. 

Spirits call our attention to the fact that the phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism, with which we are now 
very familiar, are often mentioned throughout 
the Bible. I possess six psychographs out of 
twelve plates; four are crowded with texts, all 
of which were in an unopened packet. On the 
fifth was the entire Ode of Horace in Latin, begin- 

234 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 235 

ning Eheu! fugaces Posthume, Posthume; while 
a sixth has several beautiful female faces, the re- 
maining plates were vacant. 1 

I will take two examples, the " Witch of En- 
dor " and the " Stance on the Day of Pentecost," 
for all the phenomena therein described are of 
common occurrence at present day seances; 
though the matter spoken by the control is not 
always spiritual, though generally a portion con- 
sists of a religious discourse, following the read- 
ing of a portion of the Bible and hymns sung by 
the members of the circle; for all true seances 
partake more or less of a religious meeting. 

In the case of the " Witch of Endor," if the 
reader will turn to the passage, it will be seen 
that Saul comes to consult her as to his diffi- 
culties. He disguises himself, and being under 
the false impression that the Witch or Medium 
had the power to " command " (through a " fa- 
miliar " or servant-spirit) any one to appear, 
Saul says : " Divine unto me, I pray thee, by the 
familiar spirit, and bring me up whosoever I 

iThe last-mentioned plate is reproduced in my book The 
Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism; with a full description 
by quotation of all the many texts referred to by " Ajax." 



236 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

shall name unto thee." Samuel, hearing Saul's 
voice through the medium, appears clairvoyantly 
to the woman ; but he cannot be seen by Saul, so 
he asks her who it is. She recognizes Samuel, 
and then probably passes into a trance, so that 
Samuel can control her and speak directly to 
Saul. As soon as he had finished (v. 19) Saul 
falls to the ground and the woman comes to her- 
self again and entertains Saul; analogous fea- 
tures occur at many seances. 

With regard to the phenomena of the " Day of 
Pentecost " all of them occur at seances at the 
present day ; only instead of supposing the Holy 
Ghost, i. e. y God, speaking through each and all 
simultaneously, each speaks as he is controlled 
by a separate spirit indicated by the " spirit- 
light " sent from the spirit world. 

The history of the use of the word " spirit " 
shows that it was thought in earlier times that 
all emotions were due to spirits sent by God, good 
and bad alike, as an " evil spirit from the Lord " 
came upon Saul. This we should now call a furi- 
ous fit of jealousy. Conversely a good impulse 
was regarded as due to a good spirit, and the 
higher expression " Holy Spirit " is used in 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 237 

the New Testament. But the Creed emphasizes 
the truth that since " God is Spirit " the Holy 
Spirit is God; as stated in the Athanasian 
Creed. 

We read : " When the day of Pentecost was 
now come, they were all together in one place. 
And suddenly there came from heaven a sound of 
the rushing of a might]/ wind, and it filled all the 
house where they were sitting. And there ap- 
peared unto them tongues parting asunder like 
as of fire." (No. 6.) A Spirit-light often set- 
tles on each of the sitters of the circle at a 
stance. Such may be another method of con- 
trolling the speech without the individual being 
in a trance. Similarly to the spirit controlling 
the hand in " automatic " writing. 

This suggests the probability that the man at 
Gadara was "possessed," as he at once called 
out : " What have we to do with Thee, thou Son 
of God? Art Thou come to torment us before 
the time? " 

The spirits in ordinary automatic handwriting 
always say " we " and not " I " or " me." 

Similarly the slave girl at Philippi said: 
" These men are the servants of the most High 



238 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

God, which proclaim unto you the way of salva- 
tion." 

Similarly, too, it may have been a spirit speak- 
ing through Jesus when only twelve years old: 
"Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's 
House? " Because in each case the words spoken 
were appropriate, yet at the same time incon- 
gruous with the persons who spoke them. 

The tongues of fire sat upon each of them. 
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost (or 
as we might call it " spiritual illumination " ) , 
and began to speak with other tongues, as the 
Spirit [s] gave them utterance." (No. 6.) 

The expressions italicized correspond - with 
phenomena which are frequent at present day 
stances. I will now add a description by Dr. 
Hooper who has experienced all of them. I have 
not personally seen " spirit lights " nor felt the 
wind; but I have heard a control speaking in a 
tongue (Italian) unknown to the medium. 

On asking Dr. Hooper what experience he has 
had of the occurrences, his reply is as follows: 
" With regard to ' lights,' ' rushing wind/ 
' tongues of fire/ we get them nearly every Sun- 
day; in fact they are always the prelude to a 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 239 

successful physical seance. All our members 
have experienced these phenomena. The wind 
blows most powerfully at our Trumpet-seances. 
The other sitters (not clairvoyants) see me, (the 
medium) surrounded by a white vaporous 
light." 

In the Old Testament a very similar phenome- 
non is recorded in connection with communica- 
tions from the Deity. " Behold the Lord passed 
by and a great and strong wind rent the moun- 
tain." 

" Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirl- 
wind." 

Dr. Hooper further writes me as follows re- 
garding his own experiences which tally with the 
phenomena described in the Day of Pentecost. 

" My own observations of the Seance-room 
wherein I have seen successful occurrences, are 
as follows : They begin with a gentle breeze over 
the hands which gradually increases in power. 
Then the legs become cold and a peculiar sensa- 
tion, as of a wind or a force passing round the 
circle. It has been so violent that the members 
shiver with the violence of the rushing of power. 
Then " globes " of misty luminosity appear that 



240 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

break upon contact with the table or floor with a 
violent concussion, and loud noises. At other 
times they are tiny pencil-points of light that pro- 
duce tiny raps, tongues of fire appear suddenly 
among the sitters; and directly these tongues of 
fire are absorbed by a sitter they pass under con- 
trol of a spirit entity." (Just as recorded in 
the gathering on the Day of Pentecost.) 

" I have been present at seances," Dr. Hooper 
continues, " where the sitters have been glad to 
wrap themselves in anything that was handy even 
on a summer's evening. 

" I have seen and felt the floor, walls and con- 
tents of a room violently vibrate with the power 
of the mighty rushing wind. Considerable force 
must have been present to see a piano weighing 
5 cwt. rock; and I have heard the keys played 
upon although the case was locked. 

" I have seen a convertible six-legged dining- 
room table with a slate bed raised 18 inches from 
the floor in a good light. I was present at a 
seance when a gentleman weighing over twelve 
stone was carried from one side of the room to 
another. 1 He was an investigator and not a spir- 

i Cp., Acts, 8, 40. This process is now called " levitation." 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 241 

itualist nor a medium, and it took place in his 
own dining-room. 

" Twenty years' experience has taught me to 
believe such phenomena to be inseparable from 
the mighty rushing wind and the genuineness of 
the physical phenomena." 

With regard to the source of the rushing wind 
at seances, Dr. Hooper writes me as follows: 
"The forces (wind, etc.) manifested at seances 
proceed from us on earth. I am fully of opinion 
that it is our * organic ' force that is manipulated 
by the spirits and that mediumship is a peculiar 
organic quality that can be cultivated to a cer- 
tain degree; but a medium is born one, and can 
be developed, but not made. What makes me so 
strongly of this opinion is that some people I 
knew in Bristol (the town where the famous Dr. 
Monck (Adanijah x ), had his living), were anx- 
ious to investigate Spiritualism. They met regu- 
larly twice a week for some twelve months. The 

Azotus, the Greek form of Ashdod, is now called Astud. See 
Glimpses of the next State, p. 420. A relative (a boy) of 
Archdeacon Colley, was levitated a distance of thirty yards, 
while lying in a hut reading. The hut fell down immediately 
afterwards. He kept the book as a memento. 

i As in earth, so as a spirit, he always spelt this word with 
an a, instead of an o. 



242 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

results were nil — not even a rap or tilt of the 
table. They heard of my mediumship and asked 
me to attend one of their seances; which I did, 
with most marvellous results ; yet in the follow- 
ing weeks there was an absence of the slightest 
phenomenon. They were sincere and conformed 
to all the rules, yet they were barren of results. 
This proved that my presence brought the neces- 
sary organic (radiumistic?) qualities that con- 
stitute the medium between the two worlds. 
This force, emanating from our bodies, can be 
measured by instruments." 

Spirit lights are a common phenomenon. The 
following is a description from Do the Dead Re- 
turn? 

"A candle was burning on the mantelpiece 
when the first signs (taps, and cold breezes pass- 
ing over hands and faces) were given of spirit 
presence. We sang a hymn, and then, by request 
of the ' invisibles ' read parts of Holy Scripture, 
both from the Old and New Testaments, chapter 
and verse in each case being evidently well known 
and clearly and emphatically indicated. A quar- 
ter of an hour or so thus passed away, the tok- 
ens of the presence of invisible power becoming 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 243 

more and more marked. We were now requested 
to extinguish the light. Almost immediately 
there appeared floating through the room a num- 
ber of small lights passing round the circle, past 
our faces and over our heads with extraordinary 
rapidity. 

" These little balls of light sparkle and twinkle 
like stars as they pass through the room, 1 now 
increasing, now decreasing in brilliancy; again, 
now high up in the air, near the ceiling, now 
close to the sitter, and almost touching his face." 

" At subsequent sittings with the same lady, I 
have seen lights of much larger size and of 
greater brilliancy, in shape resembling a tongue 
of fire or a flame such as is produced by an or- 
dinary small oil lamp." 

A further description of lights is given by Mr. 
Speer, at Mr. Moses' seances. 

We have seen above that spirit lights can move 
intelligently, and in response to the wishes of 
the sitters of a seance. They are therefore a 
means of indicating their presence. The alight- 
ing on the head of a medium would correspond to 

i They are often very small, almost microscopical, as in the 
photo of forked tongues of light (No. 6). 



244 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

the ordinary way a spirit enters and controls 
one, by passing through the head into the body, 
as described in Vice- Admiral Osborne Moore. 

I had asked Dr. Hooper if he could supply me 
with a spirit-photograph of " spirit tongues of 
fire." The following is his description of the 
taking No. 6 (Jan. 1917) : " On December 17th, 
we acted upon your suggestion and made an ex- 
posure with the camera in our seance. The cam- 
era was placed about six feet from myself, point- 
ing towards me, and during the physical portion 
of our seance, held in complete darkness, Mr. 
Bailey turned the bulb to open the shutter, and 
it was left open for about one and a half hours in 
total darkness. No light was used whatever. 

" The large tongue gives a very good represen- 
tation of the lights as seen; the myriad of light 
dots (best seen in the photograph through a 
pocket-lens) I think must represent the tiny pin 
points of lights that are constantly seen during 
our seances. The light at the bottom portion, I 
think, must represent the luminous mist that 
the sitters always see in front of me. The edge 
of the table was just where it appears when fo- 
cussed on the ground glass screen. The topmost 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 245 

head — is it the Archdeacon? He was very 
much in evidence that evening and spoke for a 
long time through the trumpet. The lower face 
we do not recognize." 

A close comparison of this head with that of 
the Archdeacon shows some points of resem- 
blance; but the totality leads one to the conclu- 
sion that it is not he. 

Dr. Hooper adds a few more words touching 
the Day of Pentecost : " At the Day of Pentecost, 
there were gathered together the disciples of 
Christ, who were undoubtedly chosen because of 
their mediumistic gifts. That is proved by their 
being told not to think of what they were to say, 
as the words would be put into their mouths. 

" Sceptics often sneer at the absence of pheno- 
mena because of unbelievers being present; but 
I believe even Christ, who demonstrated such 
wonderful powers, had to retire from a people 
with whom He could not work any miracles be- 
cause of their unbelief." 

All testify to the necessity of harmonious con- 
ditions at a seance; any discordance appears to 
arrest the spirit's capabilities of communicating. 
An evil spirit may so harm a medium that an- 



246 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

other following is prevented from talking. This 
occurred with Dora, as she said. 1 

Lastly, judging by modern experiences, we may 
assume that the various dialects of Aramaic 
spoken by those on whom the spirit- lights rested, 
were uttered by the spirit-controls in them. 
" As the spirit gave them utterance," was the ex- 
pression of the describer, but not strictly accu- 
rate as a matter of fact 

The following is a communication on the Day 
of Pentecost, from the other side. " Ajax," in 
earth-life, was a well known preacher in Chicago ; 
but I do not know his real name; he was asked 
to give his explanation of the phenomena of the 
Day of Pentecost. It was a very long discourse, 
of which the following are a few items of more 
special importance. He at once recognized it as 
a great spiritualistic meeting, and observed: 
" The mighty rushing wind was just as you have 
experienced it here, so many times in this seance 
room. It is almost impossible for important or 
great manifestations to take place unless you 
have that wind. What does it consist of? It is 
a psychic force. Whence does it emanate? 

i Spirit Psychometry, 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 247 

From the bodies of the sitters. It is a power 
which cannot be seen by the naked eye. A mag- 
net, as you term it, has both north and south 
poles, and it is possible to depolarize those poles 
by means known to your scientists. The spirits, 
as they come in your seance room, make use of 
the forces from your bodies. They gather them 
together from out of the battery that is made, as 
it were, by those who are meeting there, and they 
utilize the forces, in order that they may demon- 
strate their presence to you here upon earth. 

" Depolarization is known to be a fact ; what 
is it? They know it is a force, but what the 
force is, they cannot explain to you; and such 
being the case it is no wonder that spiritualistic 
phenomena are wrapt in so much mystery. 

" Spiritualism has proved to you that the com- 
monly termed ' dead ' can and do return through 
our various mediums today. They have spoken 
in divers tongues; and not only so, but persons 
who have been present have recognized the lan- 
guage that has been used, and have said that it is 
without fault. 

" How many of your spiritualistic men have 
been aware that the spirits of the departed have 



248 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

given forth outpourings of which they are totally 
ignorant; and persons have been present that 
have been able to converse with them in lan- 
guages of which the medium is entirely ignorant? 

" Then, again, we must consider the definition 
of i tongues of fire.' How many of you spiritual- 
ists that are gathered here have seen the tongues 
of fire descend and come in contact with your 
medium? For this is a very common occurrence, 
and has been acknowledged by men of science. 

" This form of phenomenon is true; the only 
difference is that you spiritualists acknowledge 
the phenomenon to be produced by the spirits of 
the departed, while those of the old days, who 
were gathered together after the death of Christ, 
thought that it was the Holy Spirit of God that 
descended upon them. 

" You must take your mind back and think of 
the ignorance in which the people of those days 
were steeped." 

This of course applied to the disciples. In the 
Old Testament, every emotion of man, good or 
bad, was attributed to some spirit sent by God to 
rest upon the man. Thus, as stated, Saul's fit of 
jealousy was thought to be such. David's own 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 249 

determination to number the people, though 
wrong, was actually attributed to God in the 
older account, whereas after the Captivity, hav- 
ing heard about the " evil spirits " recognized in 
the East, they took an old Hebrew word mean- 
ing " accuser," and so attributed David's sin of 
numbering the people to"" Satan." 

Ajax continued : " Christ was a great medium 
who selected his disciples from amongst people 
whom He knew to be mediumistically inclined; 
and when these people were brought together to 
hold their seance — because there were so many 
mediums present and so much sympathy between 
them — the conditions were all that could be 
wished for ; and the knowledge of spirit commun- 
ication was then and there demonstrated to the 
world. 

" Mediumship in those days was brought to the 
apex of perfection, because the conditions under 
which the mediums were developed were of the 
best that could be obtained; that being so the 
best results were given to the people, in healing, 
prophesying [i. e., preaching] and the gift of 
speaking in divers languages, or ' tongues,' and 
the interpretation of the tongues." 



250 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Ajax, it is presumed, means that spirits of vari- 
ous capacities spoke through the mediumistic 
disciples. Thus one spirit might speak the dia- 
lect of Aramaic of the " parts about Cyrene " or 
Egypt, another knowing both that and Palestine 
could interpret it. 

Ajax concluded his address thus : " Spiritual- 
ism demonstrates to you that the i Days of Pen- 
tecost ' are not passed, but that they are still 
with you today. And it is only necessary for you 
to meet together with a firm belief and a truly 
religious frame of mind to demonstrate this 
truth." 

One of the commonest of phenomena at present 
day seances is the presence of hands only. These 
have been so often described that I would refer 
the reader to my book on the Proofs of the Truths 
of Spiritualism, in which I have introduced the 
photograph of a bureau over which a hand ap- 
peared. It recalls the account in the Book of 
Daniel where he described Belshazzar's feast and 
the hand-writing on the wall : Mene, Mene, Tekel, 
Upharsin. (No. 7.) 

Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, 
and the last King of Babylon (B.C. 550). As 



SPIRITUALISM IN THE BIBLE 251 

the Book of Daniel was written about B.C. 150, 
or some four hundred years afterwards, it must 
contain what had been handed down from the 
earlier period, mixed with legend. But as we 
now know, not only do isolated hands appear but 
sometimes take up a pencil and write as well. 

With regard to the gift of healing, this is 
largely possessed by Dr. Hooper himself as his 
innumerable and grateful patients (of which I 
am one) know so well. He tells me that he has 
no idea whence the power comes ; but when man- 
ipulating a patient — who may have tried every 
resource and failed to get relief, and then faith- 
less comes as a last chance to him — Dr. Hooper 
says he feels as if some force " pulsated " by 
throbs through his body and the moment his hand 
passes over the injured place, it is at once felt by 
the patient, though the latter cannot see him, as 
when the spine is injured, and he is lying face 
downwards. 1 

When Archdeacon Colley first went to see Dr. 
Hooper it was to try his skill on a very painful 

i Dr. Hooper's expression reminds one of what is recorded 
by St. Mark : " Jesus perceiving in Himself that the power 
proceeding from Him had gone forth, etc." — Mark, 5, 30. 



252 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

knee. He told me it was agony to kneel at the 
Communion service. In twenty minutes he was 
cured, and he never had any return of the pain. 
The reader must form his own conclusion or 
" theory " to account for this phenomenon. 

Another friend of mine, high sheriff for his 
county, has a similar power of healing. I had 
been much troubled with abdominal pains, and I 
asked him if he could do me any good. He of- 
fered to try, he living in Wales and I in Bourne- 
mouth. After a few days he wrote : " Did your 
pains leave you last Saturday, because / had 
them ! " I wrote at once to say they had; and 
from that day, six years ago, 1 I have never been 
troubled with them. If this is possible now, can 
we wonder at our Lord curing patients at a dis- 
tance as He did? 

iThe present date is Jan. 25, 1919. 



.^»«n^r«»>.» ii i i-f 



CHAPTER XV 

THE NATURE OF MAN, HERE AND HEREAFTER 

The material and spirit composition of man. — Difficulty 
of distinguishing " soul " from " spirit."^- What life is. — 
It is not a Force. — Indications of the presence of Life. — 
Psyche and Pneuma. — The abuse of the useful becomes 
immoral and sinful. — The Spiritual, a higher grade than 
the psychical. — Reasoning on the concrete plane (animal) ; 
or the abstract plane (man only). — Illustrations. — Ani- 
mals cannot rise above the concrete or psychical stage. — 
The theoretical origin of man. — He acquires the power of 
reasoning on abstract ideas. — Example of structures; the 
camera and the eye. — The Origin of Morality. — Man alone 
has Freewill, as contrasted with animals, which act automat- 
ically. — Laws of Communities necessary. — Hammurabi's 
Code. — 0. T. Laws, Scholastic. — Motives of obedience, 
temporal rewards and punishments. — Conscience unde- 
veloped. — Christ stimulated the freewill of man to follow 
His steps through Love for Himself, without rewards, ex- 
cepting that of a good conscience. — Love, the root or rock 
of Christianity. — The enthusiasm of humanity. — Pneuma 
transcends Psyche. — The great spiritual Revolution in- 
troduced by Christ. — The Spirit body. — A suggested ex- 
planation. — The empty tomb. — The information from 
Spirits about the differences between man and spirit. 

We speak of a man as having a living body of 
flesh, bones, &c, and a spirit as well as a soul. 

253 



254 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

When he passes over, he dispenses with his ma- 
terial body, and reveals himself in his spirit- 
body. Otherwise, he remains precisely the same 
in all the characteristics of his personality. 

When we attempt to answer categorically the 
question : What are his sonl and spirit? and what 
constitutes his spirit-body? we can only reply 
in a more or less suggestive manner, for we are 
unable to deal with them solely by the scientific 
methods of inductions and experimental verifica- 
tions, as we can his material system. 

Let us start with Life. What it is, in its es- 
sence, nobody knows. It is certainly not a 
Force, for it cannot be brought into line with all 
the well-known forces. Its presence can only be 
recognized by certain phenomena, none of which 
can be discovered in minerals. Two of the uni- 
versal and most significant characteristics of 
Life are Assimilation and Respiration, i. e., the 
taking in of food for growth and development, 
and breathing. 

We recognize that our fingers are alive, be- 
cause we see our nails grow, and a cut will heal. 
But life in ourselves and animals is indicated by 
much more important things, such as thought 



JT"l»i in* in* m- i i it -■»*..--.-. -- ,+■■* ^ ^*~, 



THE NATURE OF MAN 255 

and reason, as well as by emotions, &c. These 
are common to man and all animals provided 
with brains. We speak of man as having not 
only life, but a soul and spirit. Can these be 
distinguished? We talk of his intellect or of his 
stupidity, of his free will, memory; where do 
these find their home? Do they belong to his 
soul or spirit, or both? The Greek words are 
psyche for the soul and pneuma for the spirit. 
Both primarily mean " breath," and we still 
speak metaphorically of the " breath of life." 

St. Paul distinguishes them by using corre- 
sponding adjectives; for "Spiritual," pneumati- 
kos, and for " soul," psychikos; this being trans- 
lated by " natural " in our Bible. 

The Psyche, or soul, would appear to include 
the properties of life, such as desires, affections, 
or passions, &c, which are common to man and 
animals, and " natural " as being developed as 
our body grows. They all have their root in 
what we may call self -considerations. 

Several, though good and useful in themselves, 
when indulged to excess by us, become bad and 
immoral, or sinful traits in us; St. Paul then 
groups them as u sins of the flesh," which are 



256 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

only possible in man, for he is conscious of hav- 
ing a free will. No animal possesses this, for 
they are mentally automatic, and remain non- 
moral. 

On the other hand, the qualities which are 
called "Spiritual" (pneumatikos) are of a 
higher kind of natural or psychical qualities. 
Thus man alone can reason on the abstract plane, 
while animals are restricted to reasoning on the 
concrete only, i. e., as far as a study of their ac- 
tions can be relied upon, animals do not rise be- 
yond the psychical level. 

Man alone ascends to the pneumatical. The 
Spirit is not an absolutely distinct entity, but 
might be more accurately called the highest type 
of the psyche; nevertheless, there is sl sharp line 
of demarcation between the two. 

The distinguishing features which mark man 
as distinct from animals, are best seen by illus- 
trations. Birds, for example, discover by experi- 
ment how to build nests which they, presumably, 
think best suited to their kind. They require 
reason, as does the making of a bird-cage ; but it 
is mentally automatic; while in plants perfect 
" reasonable " adaptations to the visits of special 



THE NATURE OF MAN 257 

insects in flowers, is secured without any previ- 
ous mental conceptions. You may take the eggs 
from a nest of one kind of bird, hatch them un- 
der a totally different one, so that when they 
build their nest (having supplied them with ne- 
cessary materials) they will build a nest exactly 
like that of their parents and just as perfect, 
without having been taught. The process be- 
comes hereditary and automatic in the race. 

Animals, therefore, do not appear able to rise 
above the psychical. How came man to reach 
any higher level, if he was evolved from some ani- 
mal? 

The late eminent scientist, Dr. W. B. Carpen- 
ter, proposed the following theory : Contrasting 
man's skull with that of some anthropoid ape, he 
calls attention to the massive jaw, the large ca- 
nine teeth, serviceable for offence or defence, 
when opposed by enemies. Their use demands 
powerful muscles, deep-seated in the temples. 
This implies great depressions, which limit the 
internal capacity for the brain. 

The young ape of today has a globular skull, 
but as it grows, it takes the more elongated form 
of its species. The conclusion which Dr. Carpen- 



258 KELIGION OF THE SPIKIT WORLD 

ter drew, was that the external conditions of life 
demanded their fighting apparatus. 

Now supposing a certain kind became free 
from enemies, lived and thrived in isolation. At- 
rophy would set in by constant disuse, the jaw 
would become smaller, the canine teeth reduced, 
as they are in ourselves, the temporal muscles 
of little account, the deep depression no longer 
exists, the skull retains the globular form, and the 
brain can now develop itself. This then acquires 
new powers, and the first and most important 
one is that the first " Man " would be able to 
reason on the abstract plane. He would realize 
that he, himself, was not part of his body. The 
" I " or " Ego" was probably his first abstract 
conception, i. e., not appreciable by the senses. 
He then reasons from this fact that other men 
must have " Egos." His mind begins to rise to 
the conclusion that many Egos must be the 
source of all the actions of forces in nature, as he 
can make use of forces himself. Moreover, as 
he could make, say, a hut, or weapon, so then 
natural invisible Egos could make things too, 
such as all the plants and animals he sees about 
him. 



THE NATURE OF MAN 259 

He advances in knowledge and experience in 
constructing things for himself, and he in time 
makes, let us say, a camera. He discovers that 
his own eye is constructed on precisely the same 
principles. It has a dark chamber, a sensitive 
" retina " at the back, a bi-convex lens on the 
front, &c, and all far more complete and perfect 
than his own work. He has not to extract a 
plate from the back of his eye; for the picture 
itself is conveyed as vibrations along the " optic 
nerve " to a definite place in the brain, where a 
reverse process seems to take place, for the pic- 
ture appears to the sense of sight outside, near or 
far as the case may be. Moreover, the micro- 
scopic picture on the retina is inverted just as it 
is in a camera. 

The Being who can do all this must be some- 
thing like himself but vastly superior. 

Another thing which distinguishes man from 
animals is that he soon discovers he cannot do 
what he likes with other people's property. 
Something must be done in communities to se- 
cure order. So the community makes laws and 
invents the words " right " and " wrong," or 
their equivalent, according as men obey or dis- 



260 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

obey the laws. Such is, apparently, the origin of 
the consciousness of morality. " I had not 
known sin, but by the law," says St. Paul. 

The difference between man and animals comes 
in here, for man alone has a free will to choose. 
Animals have no free will, but act automatically 
in following the strongest motive. They have no 
naturally developed conscience, though a dog will 
be ashamed of himself if he has violated his mas- 
ter's rule, who punishes him with the stick. 
Such is a rudiment — and as the same scholastic 
system prevailed in Israel, and later — there is 
no word for conscience in the Old Testament. 

Some men, however, will break the laws of a 
community, so temporal punishments are ar- 
ranged for each kind of misdemeanour. 

A good example is seen in the oldest code in 
existence, that of Hammurabi, King of Baby- 
lon, when Abraham was living there. Every 
one of the 200 or more laws has its equivalent 
punishment following it. Several have been 
copied and reappear in the book of Exodus and 
Leviticus, such as " an eye for an eye," " a tooth 
for a tooth " ; but Hammurabi adds, " a slave 
for a slave," and a " son for a son." 



THE NATURE OF MAN 261 

This system of punishment for breaking laws, 
is still universal ; and we carry it out in schools. 
But in the Old Testament, besides the punish- 
ments of famine, pestilence, and defeat in war 
being threatened for disobedience to Jehovah's 
laws, promises of reward are given, such as peace 
and prosperity. 

Such a system is evidently scholastic, and only 
suited to a primitive class of mind; so St. Paul 
says : " The law was a schoolmaster to bring man 
to Christ." 

It does not tend to develop the Conscience, con- 
sequently this word is not to be found in the Old 
Testament at all. 

On the other hand we sometimes say to the 
more intelligent school boys : " I do not intend 
to punish you, but I will put you on your honour 
not to do it." 

This is something like what Christ introduced 
into the world. Just as a boy might miss a re- 
ward at first, he discovers a new kind in the ap- 
preciation held of his behaviour, just so the 
Christian. He discovers the reward of a good 
conscience is ample. He soon discovers that the 
results of self-sacrifice — the rock of Christian- 



262 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ity — is Love, which leads to an enthusiasm for 
doing good, and that " it is more blessed to give 
than to receive." Thus does the pneumatikos 
surpass the psychikos, and we have entered the 
Spiritual world. 

St. Paul, at the conclusion of his Psalm of 
Love, says : " Now remaineth these three, Faith, 
Hope, and Love, but the greatest of these is 
Love." 1 

" Faith " is not only — much less the same 
thing as — " belief," it is a firm conviction that 
the Christ-life is the only one all men and women 
should follow; but Faith includes the fulfilment 
of this conviction. This is what St. James says : 
"Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. 
. . . Thou believest that God is one; the devils 
also believe, and shudder," 2 but no one will 
credit them with faith in Christ. 

Hope is the consequence of Faith, and consists 
of a looking forward to a far better world than 
this. 

Love is the enthusiasm of the spirit of human- 
ity, and which each of us must have if we pro- 
fess to walk as our Master walked. 3 

i / Cor., 13, 13. 2 jas. 2, 17 ff. a / John, 2, 6. 



THE NATURE OF MAN 263 

Whoever has these three and lives up to them, 
is the " perfect " man, i. e., as far as it is possible. 
Such is pneumatikos. He who only lives a moral 
life is psychikos. As the new life was intro- 
duced by Christ, as our example, it required a 
new word whereby to express it. St. Paul chose 
the word pneumatikos, i. e., " Spiritual," while 
the old laws of the Decalogue, &c, were " nat- 
ural," or psychical, for men could discover their 
necessity for themselves. St. Paul distinguishes 
the " natural " from the " spiritual " : " The 
natural man receiveth not the things that are 
spiritual." A simple and only too common ex- 
ample is the selfish profiteer, who gives to no 
one, and the open-handed philanthropist. 

Hence it is the Christian Religion that consti- 
tutes Christ's " Word," is spiritual. The teach- 
ing of the old laws was natural or psychical. 

There is here something akin to a revolution. 
For the Christian's motive for keeping Christ's 
words is interior, i. e., Love in his heart; whereas 
the motive was external before Christ came, 
namely the fear of punishment, or else the prom- 
ise of material rewards, the laws being on tables 
of stone. 



264 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 

The Soul and Spirit, therefore, stand for a 
natural or psychical life on the one hand, and the 
Christian life, on the other. 

What is the Spirit-body which we acquire on 
parting from our material one? We do not 
know ; but the results of modern science are sug- 
gestive. We are told that all material things 
consist of electrons or the ultimate corpuscules 
of electricity. As solid ice is the same thing as 
liquid water and gaseous steam, their difference 
only resulting from being subjected to different 
degrees of temperature; a consequence of which 
is that the molecules are more and more drawn 
asunder. So may be {perhaps) the difference 
between the material and spirit-body made out of 
it, for when a materialized spirit appears the 
weight of the medium decreases. 

May we apply these results of science to Our 
Lord's Resurrection? He tells us that He re- 
ceived the power to raise Himself, from the 
Father. Being a great Medium Himself he re- 
quired none other and so we may suppose that 
He converted His own material, earthly body 
into what we call a materialized spirit-body, His 
new clothing being " thought-apparel " accord- 



THE NATURE OF MAN 265 

ing to the information we receive from spirits to- 
day, and we can photograph them. 

As clairvoyants can see the spirits pass 
through material doors or walls now, so did Our 
Lord when with His disciples. 

St. John's account of his and St. Peter's visit 
to the empty tomb is corroborative of the same 
suggestion. If the reader will turn to St. John's 
Gospel and read the story in the 20th Chapter, he 
will see that that Apostle describes the cloths 
" lying," i. e., undisturbed on the stone slab upon 
which Our Lord's body had lain, while the nap- 
kin or fillet, which was bound round His head 
still remained coiled in a circular form as the 
Greek word implies " rolled in." 

In our English Bible it is said St. Peter, who 
did not enter the tomb before St. John came up, 
merely " saw," i. e., in Greek caught sight of, the 
white cloths in the darkness. But when St. John 
went into the tomb he " beheld," that means in 
Greek was strongly impressed at the sight. 

When they came out he " saw " and " be- 
lieved " what the Resurrection meant, i. e., as the 
Greek implies, with his mind, and that he under- 
stood. 



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